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WAY STATIONS 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



GEORGE MANDEVILLE'S HUSBAND 

THE NEW MOON 

THE OPEN QUESTION 

BELOW THE SALT 

THE MAGNETIC NORTH 

THE DARK LANTERN 

COME AND FIND ME 

THE CONVERT 

VOTES FOR WOMEN: A Play in Three 
Acts 

THE FLORENTINE FRAME 

WOMEN'S SECRET 

WHY? 

UNDER HIS ROOF 

MY LITTLE SISTER 

WAY STATIONS 



WAY STATIONS 



BY 

ELIZABETH ROBINS 




NEW ?-0R#. 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1913 



a' 






COPTKIGHT. I91S 

By ELIZABETH ROBINS 

Published, March, 1913 



©CU34621S' 



AUTHOR'S NOTE 

Of this collection of speeches, lectures 
and articles, dealing with the Woman's 
Movement, those which have not before ap- 
peared anywhere in print are the speech at 
The Prisoners" Banquet; The Suffrage 
Camp Revisited; At Newcastle Town Hall; 
Speech to the Woman Writers; At Crow- 
borough, Sussex; Speech at the Albert 
Hall, June 15, 1912, and all the sections 
headed Time Table. 

Never having been one of the more ac- 
tive participants in the events dealt with 
by this book, my infrequent appearances in 
print, or on platforms, have each and all 
been the direct result of some special call 
or crisis. When the various articles were 
collected they seemed meaningless enough 
lacking any statement of the particular 
circumstances which elicited them. I have, 
therefore, linked these papers together by 
a brief narrative which gives, so far as I 
am aware, the only succinct account in ex- 
istence of the main course of the new 
Woman's Movement in England. 

E. R. 
Chinsegut, Brooksville, Florida 
January, 1913 



TO 
MARGARET DREIER ROBINS 



CONTENTS 

i 

PAGE 

WOMAN'S SECRET 1 

Published originally by the Garden City Press. 

TIME TABLE: October, 1905— December, 1906 ... 18 

II 

THE PRISONERS' BANQUET 28 

Speech at the Savoy Hotel, December 11, 1906 
TIME TABLE: December, 1906— June, 1907 .... 35 

III 

THE FEMINISTE MOVEMENT IN ENGLAND . . 40 

Published in Collier's Weekly, June 29, 1907 
TIME TABLE: June, 1907— March, 1908 45 

IV 

THE SUFFRAGE CAMP RE-VISITED 50 

A lecture given at the Portman Rooms, London, 
March, 1908 

TIME TABLE: March— June, 1908 T4 

V 

THE MEANING OF IT 79 

An impression of the Great Hyde Park Demonstra- 
tion, published in the Daily Mail, June 22, 1908 

TIME TABLE: June— September, 1908 82 



CONTENTS 
VI 

PAGE 

AT NEWCASTLE TOWN HALL 86 

September, 1908 

TIME TABLE: September, 1908— March, 1909 . . . 92 

VII 

SIGNS OF THE TIMES 99 

Speech at the Queen s Hall, London, printed in Votes 
for Women, March, 1909 

TIME TABLE: March— May, 1909 ....... Ill 

VIII 

TO THE WOMEN WRITERS' SUFFRAGE LEAGUE 114 

At the Waldorf Hotel, London, May 4, 1909 
TIME TABLE: May—July, 1909 120 

IX 

THE HUNGER STRIKE 125 

Letter published in the Westminster Gazette, July 21, 
1909 

TIME TABLE: July 22— December 3, 1909 . . . . . 129 

X 

WHY 138 

Published in Everybody's Magazine, December, 1909, 
New York; in Votes for Women, London, and as 
a pamphlet by the Women Writers' Suffrage 
League 

TIME TABLE: December, 1909— May, 1910 .... 196 



CONTENTS 

XI 

PAGE 

SHALL WOMEN WCRK? .220 

A lecture given at St. James Hall, London, and here 
reprinted by permission of the Fortnightly Review, 
It also was published in the Metropolitan Maga- 
zine, New York 

TIME TABLE: May— August, 1910 ...*,.. 225 

XII 
MR. PARTINGTON'S MOP ......... 228 

Votes for Women, August 12, 1910 
TIME TABLE: May, 1911 .......... 239 

XIII 

THE WOMEN WRITERS AT THE CRITERION . . 243 

May 23, 1910 
TIME TABLE: July, 1910— June, 1911 ...... 251 

XIV 
COME AND SEE . . 262 

The Coronation Suffrage Pageant, reprinted from the 
Westminster Gazette of June 16, 1911 

TIME TABLE: June 16— October, 1911 ..... 269 

XV 

AT CROWBOROUGH, SUSSEX ........ 271 

October 23, 1911 

TIME TABLE: October, 1911— March 7, 1912 ... 275 

XVI 

LETTERS TO THE TIMES 288 

March 7, 1912 
TIME TABLE: March 5-22, 1912 292 



CONTENTS 
XVII 

PAGE 

THE PERFIDY OF SYMPATHIZERS 995 

Votes for Women, March 99, 1919 
TIME TABLE: March 99-98, 1919 301 

XVIII 

AT THE ALBERT HALL 304 

Speech, March 98, 1919 
TIME TABLE: March 98— April, 1919 319 

XIX 

SERMONS IN STONES 317 

Reprinted by permission of the Contemporary Review 
TIME TABLE: April— June 15, 1919 331 

XX 

THE ALBERT HALL SPEECH 339 

June 15, 1919 
IN CONCLUSION 349 

Printed under the title, Woman's Way, by McClure's 
Magazine, March, 1913 



WOMAN'S SECRET* 

With all the sense of partisanship that the Women's 
Movement in England may arouse in certain natures, 
there is one occasional feature of it (a feature far 
more infrequent than has been alleged) that some of 
us deprecate. It is the assumption that men have 
consciously and deliberately initiated all the injus- 
tices from which women suffer. To assume this is 
at once to suppose men more powerful than they 
have ever been, and more wrong-headed. 

So far as I know them, the great majority of the 
women leaders in reform, share a sense of painful 
wincing when they hear women talking as if all men 
were in a conscious conspiracy against the other sex. 

Realising our own imperfections, a sense of some- 
thing very like shame descends upon us on those 
occasions when we are asked to listen to pleas that 
would make out all women to be Angels of Light and 
all men Princes of Darkness. 

Looking as far into the matter as we are able, we 
find the chief difference between ourselves and men 
to lie in the fact that men are expected to struggle 
against adverse circumstance, whereas they have 
made it our chief virtue not to struggle. 

* Originally published by the Garden City Press, Letchworth, 
Eng. 

1 



2 WAY STATIONS 

Nevertheless, when we begin to inquire into the 
origin of the order under which we live, we cannot 
believe in our hearts that men really ever got to- 
gether and said : " Go to ! we'll enslave the women ! " 
On the contrary, we find a difficulty in doubting that 
we all merely followed our lines of least resistance, 
and that these lines brought women so constantly to 
the exercise of patience at the cradle and the hearth, 
and brought men so constantly to the exercise of 
physical force on the battlefield or in the chase, 
that the hands of each became subdued to that they 
worked in. 

Women's hands, as civilisation advanced, grew 
softer and smaller ; man's grew larger and more 
muscular as they exercised their power to grip or 
strike. The arrangement between the sexes seems 
to have come about without blame or credit on 
either side. It was the best working arrangement 
the uncivilised could devise. The trouble with it 
to-day is that it long ago served its purpose, and 
became outworn. We all, men and women alike, 
have arrived at a place where we must devise some- 
thing better. But we shall not come by any fair 
understanding of the past, nor by any helpful scheme 
of betterment for the future, till women realise and 
frankly admit that men, equally with themselves, are 
victims of circumstance. 

The object of these pages is twofold. One is to 
put forward a plea which, if it were generally al- 
lowed, might serve better than anything else to do 



WOMAN'S SECRET 3 

away with age-old misunderstanding. My second 
object is to set forth what seems to be the chief rea- 
son for the too long continuance of the situation in 
which we find ourselves, and to suggest that the 
cause of it is woman's inarticulateness in the past. 

To speak of her as inarticulate is not to forget 
that she has long been called the voluble sex. Her 
supposed inability to keep a secret is with many an 
unchallenged article of faith. Yet no secret has 
ever been better kept than the woman's, as those 
may dimly have divined who speak of the sex as 
enigmatic. 

In every tongue, at various stages of the world's 
progress, we have had the man's views upon every 
subject within sight — including woman. What the 
woman thought of it all, no deepest delver in dusty 
archives, or among ruins of dead cities, has ever 
brought to light. The sagas, the fiistories, song, 
epitaph, and story — the world's garnered treasure 
of record, whether it be of the life of action or the 
life of the spirit — they are all but so many reflec- 
tions of the mind of man. 

From India to Egypt, from Greece to Yucatan, 
the learned are labouring to bring the Past to light. 
All over the civilised world are those who wait with 
eagerness to hear of the recovery of some lost mas- 
ter-piece — thrilling when the cable tells of a 
Menander speaking for himself at last, instead of 
through the mouths of others. All the learned 
world waits to hear what men of the Minoan civilisa- 



4 WAY STATIONS 

tion felt and thought. But the living may wait till 
they, too, are dust; or, while their brief day lasts, 
they may read all the books in all the tongues of 
earth, con every record in clay or stone or papyrus, 
and still know only half the story. Schliemann may 
uncover one Troy after another, six separate cities 
deep, and never come the nearer to what Helen 
thought. All that is not silence is the voice of man. 

Some would wrest the significance of this to a re- 
proach against woman, seeing in it the most sweeping 
of all the indictments against her belated claim to 
stand — in civilised communities — on an equal foot- 
ing with her brother man. But to read history so 
is to understand man's part in it as little as woman's. 

If I were one of the " dominant sex," I think I 
would not be so sure, as many good men seem to be, 
that they are competent to speak for women. If I 
were a man, and cared to know the world I live in, I 
almost think it would make me a shade uneasy — the 
weight of that long silence of one-half the world; 
even more uneasy, if, being a man, I should come to 
realise the strange persistence of the woman in her 
immemorial r61e. When I should hear women chat- 
tering, I almost think I might not feel it so acute in 
me to note that with all their words they so seldom 
" say anything." What if they know better? 
What if it is by that means they have kept their 
secret? For let no one think the old rule of femi- 
nine dissimulation is even yet superseded. 

Some measure we get pf the profundity of that 



WOMAN'S SECRET 5 

abyss of silence when we see, even in these emanci- 
pated times, how little of what woman really thinks 
and feels gets over the footlights of the world's big 
stage. 

Let us remember it was only yesterday that women 
in any number began to write for the public prints. 
But in taking up the pen, what did this new recruit 
conceive to be her task? To proclaim her own or 
other women's actual thoughts and feelings? Far 
from it. Her task, as she naturally and even in- 
evitably conceived it, was to imitate as nearly as 
possible the method, but above all the point of view, 
of man. 

She wrote her stories as she fashioned her gowns 
and formed her manners, and for the same reasons ; 
in literature following meekly in the steps of the 
forgotten Master, the first tribal story-teller, in- 
ventor of that chimera, " the man's woman." 

There was no insuperable difficulty in the way of 
her playing " the sedulous ape," as is amply demon- 
strated by the serried ranks of competent and popu- 
lar woman-novelists. 

She is still held to be in no way so highly flattered 
as by hearing that men can hardly credit her book 
to be the work of a woman. 

The realisation that she had access to a rich and 
as yet unrifled storehouse may have crossed her 
mind, but there were cogent reasons for concealing 
her knowledge. With that wariness of ages, which 
has come to be instinct, she contented herself with 



6 WAY STATIONS 

echoing the old fables, presenting to a man-gov- 
erned world puppets as nearly as possible like those 
that had from the beginning found such favour in 
men's sight. 

Contrary to the popular impression, to say in 
print what she thinks is the last thing the woman- 
novelist or journalist is commonly so rash as to 
attempt. In print, even more than elsewhere (un- 
less she is reckless), she must wear the aspect that 
shall have the best chance of pleasing her brothers. 
Her publishers are not women. Even the profes- 
sional readers and advisers of publishers are men. 
The critics in the world outside, men. Money, rep- 
utation — these are vested in men, If a woman 
would win a little at their hands, she must walk 
warily, and not too much displease them. But I 
put it to my brothers : Is that the spirit of the 
faithful chronicler? Is it not far more the spirit 
of the notorious flatterers and liars who, in the times 
gone by, addressed those abject prefaces to power- 
ful patrons — testimonials which make us laugh or 
blush according to our temper? Little as we can 
judge of those princes and nobles from the starving 
men of letters who licked their boots, hardly more 
can men discover to-day what women really think 
of them from the fairy-tales of feminine spinning, 
however much the spinster " makes faces," as Ste- 
venson would say, and pretends, " Now I am being 
Realistic ! " s 

What she is really doing is her level best to play 



WOMAN'S SECRET 7 

the man's game, and seeing how nearly like him she 
can do it. So conscious is she it is his game she is 
trying her hand at, that she is prone to borrow his 
very name to set upon her title-page. She does so, 
not only that she may get courage from it to talk 
deep and go a-swashbuckling now and then, but for 
the purpose of reassuring the man. Here is some- 
thing quite in your line, she implies ; for lo ! my name 
is " George." 

Her instinct for the mask is abundantly justified. 

No view is more widely accepted than that every 
woman's book is but a naive attempt to extend her 
own little personality. 

We do not commonly find the man-made hero con- 
founded with the author. When a man takes some 
small section of the arc of a character or a dramatic 
situation, and (capable of intellectual honesty, and 
precisely of leaving himself out of the Saga) if he 
follows the curve so rigidly that he describes the 
complete circle, his faithful projection of the il- 
lusion of life is rewarded by his critics' saying: 
" What a power of imagination the fellow has ! " 

If a woman but attempts this honourable task — 
— an affair of strong self-control and of almost 
mathematical accuracy — if she happens to bring it 
off, her critics pat her on the back with an absent- 
minded air, while they look about for " personal ex- 
perience." 

Or they do not even look about. They are con- 
tent to say : " This is so like the real thing it must 



8 WAY STATIONS 

be a piece of verbatim reporting, done by a person* 
whose merit is a retentive memory. These life-like 
scenes are autobiography. The heroine is naturally 
the writer's self, made to look as she thinks she looks, 
or as she wishes to Heaven she might ! " 

The opinions, the aspirations of this character or 
that — they are the woman-novelist's own. The 
fact that, as the books multiply, her heroines are 
found to be widely different in outer aspect and in 
spirit — that is* a trifle easily negligible. If there 
is no heroine, why, then the woman-writer must be 
the boy of the story. Otherwise it must be that she 
has imagination, which is plainly preposterous. 

If a woman had written " Macbeth," her critics 
would have believed she must have murdered her hus- 
band ; or, if he wasn't her husband, the more shame 1 

Until society is differently constituted let no one 
expect that women in general will adventure lightly 
upon truth-telling in their books. 

The older generation may even have the excuse 
that the doom of the false witness has overtaken 
them. In the end they believe their own lies. 

Even the young and clear-eyed may stand abashed 
before the great new task, and for another genera- 
tion the woman may still write her book but to weave 
another veil, the while she makes her bread — or 
perhaps her cake. 

If the faculty for telling the truth is in itself a 
kind of genius, a£ has been said, the use of our mere 



WOMAN'S SECRET 9 

talent for reproducing the current ideals has cer- 
tainly been the safer exercise. The fact cannot be 
too strongly emphasised that whatever special knowl- 
edge we had, whatever was new to the world of letters 
or disquieting to private life, women writers kept to 
themselves as successfully as did the Egyptian women 
buried thirty centuries ago beneath those tons of 
granite whereon men graved their version of the 
ended story. 

Of one form of testimonial man has been chary. 
Often touchingly ready to invest some woman with 
every gentle virtue, he has usually made an exception 
of humour. Some show of excuse he has had from 
two causes. Humour is of humble origin, ethically 
speaking, and seems to have been sired by cruelty - — 
the pleasure in another's pain or loss of dignity that 
found diversion in the ruder kinds of horseplay. 
Not improbably woman's natural sympathy and her 
sheltering compassion may have prevented her from 
sharing the bumpkin view of comedy which, in the 
spacious times behind us, found in Jew-baiting and 
insanity side-splitting entertainments. Woman may 
be pardoned for wondering if it may not have been 
in part her humaner instinct about some of the stock 
jokes of the race that earned her the reputation of 
a constitutional lack of humour. 

In these slightly more enlightened days, when the 
less inarticulate — called by men " the exceptional 
woman " — has been allowed this quality of humour 



10 WAY STATIONS 

so long withheld, she has taken her " exceptional- 
ness " here, as elsewhere, on trust. For any wide 
knowledge of her own sex is, perhaps, the newest of 
all woman's acquisitions. Almost every woman has 
known certain men very well indeed. Other women 
have been, even for her, the enigma they remained 
to men. 

Now we begin to see that this same sense of hu- 
mour — being a " small-arm," light, and adapted to 
delicate handling — seems to be an even commoner 
blade in the feminine armoury than in that loftier 
hall where are ranged the heavy artillery — the 
crossbows and blunderbusses of the other sex. 

But since woman's field of action has been the 
home, she found out millenniums ago that humour 
there makes for success only under the strictest 
rules. 

She has learned to welcome it as a sign of unbend- 
ing in her lord. She has even cultivated it (in him) 
by a process, pelican-like, of offering her own breast ; 
or, to modify the figure, she made her contribution 
to the domestic cheer by submitting herself to be 
the target for his pleasantry. 

She must have early seen how, when the bow is in 
the other hand, and her arrow finds him out, the 
point is so little appreciated that she has been fain 
to give up marksmanship. 

If she needed consoling for the resultant rumour 
of her lack of skill, she has found it in the reflection 
that no man has ever been known to long for humour 



WOMAN'S SECRET 11 

in his nearest relations, least of all in the wife of his 
bosom. 

The notion that woman is without this faculty is 
merely one of the many ways in which men advertise 
her success in keeping her mental processes to her- 
self. A slave's accomplishment, perhaps. Cer- 
tainly women have learnt few lessons as well. 

What wonder that the age we live in is significant 
and revolutionary beyond any other, since for the 
first time since civilisation's dawn the world is be-, 
ginning — barely beginning — to be told what the se- 
cretive half of the human race really thinks and feels. 

That we are not monkeys disporting ourselves in 
trees is due, so say the wise, to the home-making 
proclivities of one branch of the anthropoid family. 
This home-making proclivity was nothing else than 
the female's instinct to provide the best possible 
environment for her young — an added tenderness 
for those weakest breeding in her an added inventive-* 
ness. 

This was the frail-seeming but sure foundation on 
which arose the many mansions of human achieve- 
ment. 

A case might be made out by anyone so foolish as 
to wish to divide responsibility and to apportion 
merit — a case to prove that civilisation is pe- 
culiarly women's affair. Certainly we fail to see 
how the upbuilding of the race could have come 
about without its passing through two phases, which 
owed their initiation not to masculine but to femi- 



12 WAY STATIONS 

nine development. These two aspects of the same 
significant tendency were : — 

1. The woman's giving up of brute competition 
(where she excelled, be it remembered) ; 

2. Her specialising in the home (accepting the 
yoke of silence and of service). 

Woman purchased civilisation at the price of her 
individual liberty. 

When our immemorial forefathers and fore- 
mothers lived in cave and tree-crotch, the female 
asked no consideration and got no quarter, not even 
in the performance of her vital function — she had 
no need of either. She was (in spite of the drain on 
her physical resources) quite equal to the task of 
taking care of both herself and her progeny. 

So well able was she to bear the double burden — 
this major share in the perpetuation of the species 
— that where it was a question of protecting her 
young, she was accounted a foe more terrible than 
any male of her kind. 1 

No nonsense in those days about her being the 
weaker sex. 

No hint of her being a creature for whom special 
allowances must be made — till she, the first special- 
ist, began to specialise. Not till she gave up gambol- 
ling in the airy leafage and took to making a home ; 
to nursing not alone the young, but the sick and the 

iThis was published before Mr. Kipling's tribute to "the 
sex." \ 



WOMAN'S SECRET 13 

old; making rude coverings as shelter from the cold, 
brooding long upon the dead, domesticating fire for 
her first handmaiden; not till then did she cease to 
compete on the lower plane of brute strength and 
cunning with the male. 

If these first women, making their wholly instinc- 
tive choice, had not " chosen " the keeping of the 
hearthstone warm by staying at home to feed the 
fire; if women of the past had not sat by the sick 
and suffered with the dying, not only would there 
never have been a Woman Question, there would 
never have been a Civilisation. 

Now, civilisation means control. It means a 
harnessing of forces in external nature and in the 
spirit of mankind. Woman, with the child to teach 
her, practised the first lessons in the New Learning 
on herself. She engraved the strange new maxims 
on her savage heart: Be patient; be patient; and 
again and always, and down to the dark, mysterious 
end, be patient. Above all, let the fierce grown-up- 
child, man, suppose he is a hero and a king. He is 
above all things vain ; and if he is to do his new work 
of bringing in the food and defending the house 
against the enemy — ■ if he is to do these things in 
good heart — he must be allowed to think himself a 
monstrous fine fellow. No douche of cold criticism 
or shaft of wit must be turned upon him. That they 
sometimes were; that the early woman now and then 
forgot her part, and was promptly reminded of it 



14 WAY STATIONS 

by an exercise of brute force, is proved by those 
amenities of mediaeval argument — the ducking- 
stool and the gossips' bridle. 

Since her tongue was the one thing men feared 
most, no variety of female has had more scorn 
heaped on Her than the woman who had a grievance 
and dared talk about it. The silent woman was the 
paragon. Oh, well for the man who praised her 
that he could not see her heart ! The truth about 
himself and the mind of his mate, these were things 
to be hidden. For the rest, he was ruled by the two 
primal hungers, though clumsily and at cost. His 
greed in both paid him back in disease. If even 
to-day he explodes in rage at hearing fragments of 
the long-suppressed truth, who can blame the in- 
stinct of self-preservation that has held the woman 
silent hitherto upon inconvenient themes. 

From those dim ages wherein the beginnings of 
speech took shape - — the day when the first phrases 
were spoken instead of barked or brayed or chat- 
tered — from that day to this, amongst women, they 
have been few and far between who betrayed the con- 
spiracy of silence about the things that matter. 
Innocent or crafty, she has filled the void with pretty 
twittering. In all recorded history only a single 
voice here and there to rouse in men a gaping won- 
der and a deep disquiet. Then all made smooth and 
soothed again by some form of that phrase, " An 
exceptional woman," with the prompt rider, " sex- 
less." And so you others, beware! Since it is by 



WOMAN'S SECRET 15 

sex you live, take heed lest in some unwary hour you, 
too, become exceptional, and so, by a well-known 
philological necessity, decline through " singular- 
ity " to " egregiousness " and " insolence." 

Since I have admitted that hitherto men have had 
little opportunity of knowing that their point of 
view is not the only possible one, I ought to add that 
they do not make the presentation of another an 
easy matter. There is no woman, I imagine, how- 
ever old or isolated, who does not value the good 
opinion of men. Her mistake has been that she has 
valued it beyond a thing more valuable. 

Many a mere looker-on at the game must have 
been stung by the reception accorded the little hand- 
ful of women who have ventured into the public 
arena, not as artists, story-tellers, or mere com- 
mentators upon manners, but as earnest and prac- 
tical contributors to the gravest problems of life. 

If upon those who are erroneously held to repre- 
sent the prevailing temper of the Forward Party 
among women — if, upon a few, a sense of the dis- 
couragement administered by men presses so hard 
that, here and there, it finds expression in bitterness 
— that result is surely natural enough. 

My point is that it is not only " natural." Like 
most unreflective, instinctive revelations it has its 
special significance. This particular manifestation 
is perhaps more valuable than even the inquiring 
mind has realised. 

If men find themselves publicly represented by 



16 WAY STATIONS 

women as being not very noble or very effectual, they 
should see in the circumstance a proof merely that a 
woman here and there has followed the masculine 
example in taking certain instances for the type of 
creation's mould. 

Yet here again we have a case where it has made a 
vast difference when the shoe was on the other foot. 

When a man proclaims his poor opinion of women, 
lumping them all together in a general condemna- 
tion (after the fashion of certain so-called phi- 
losophers), saying the worst he can of all because 
he has had bad luck with one or two, he is not told 
that he is an hysterical or a narrow-minded creature. 

Misogynist views have not been held to be so much 
a failure of intelligence or good temper in the man, 
as a failure, black and all-unpardonable, in women. 

No one seems to have resented the ludicrous un- 
fairness of the Kundry motif in Art. Public opin- 
ion canonised the superficial Augustine, who in his 
ignoble estimate of women hesitated to spare even 
his longsuffering and most excellent mother. 

He, too, was called a saint who, with such generous 
urbanity, said of woman that she was : " A neces- 
sary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, 
a domestic peril, a deadly fascination, and a painted 
ill. 55 

If we do not blame the disappointed man for 
thinking meanly of women, neither should we in 
justice, nor in logic, blame the woman who has found 
men falling too far below her ideal for her to accept 



WOMAN'S SECRET 17 

stolidly her disillusionment. If man has not 
scrupled to show his seamy side to woman, why 
should woman scruple to admit the seamy side? 
Will the world ever arrive at a fair estimate of both 
sides till the day comes when woman presents her 
view without fear and without reproach? 

In the occasional bitterness — so much less com- 
mon among the Suffragists, for instance, than has 
been supposed — there may be for the wise man a 
degree of enlightenment that soft words could never 
bring. His enlightenment may be hoped quietly to 
rectify the current view of woman's contentment 
with her false position. In default of such peaceful 
readjustment, woman's reaction from the enforced 
attitude of subservience can hardly fail to result in 
making more general and more prolonged such tem- 
porary unfairness as may already exist in her judg- 
ment of men. 

The swing of the pendulum to the opposite ex- 
treme from the old deification of the masculine prin- 
ciple, might even (contrary to our faith) seem to be 
the only way of arriving at that fairness of each 
to each, the equilibrium of the future. 

Which consideration brings me to my plea: that 
men should, for our common good, embrace such op- 
portunity as comes their way of taking a turn at 
trying to understand some of the points of view 
possible to the opposite sex. I would ask them 
to remember that if our parts had been reversed, 
if woman had been the dominant partner, men 






18 WAY STATIONS 

would have exercised precisely those arts of dis- 
simulation and of long silence, alternated with brief 
outbursts of bitterness, that always characterise the 
unfree. When the few women who can bring them- 
selves to speak out plain, do so in men's hearing, 
even those who wish well only to themselves — if 
there are such men — should listen with a little of 
the patience that, for centuries untold, women have 
bestowed upon masculine utterances. 

The fairer-minded will remember, too, that ex- 
position is an art difficult to the novice* As in the 
other arts, skill in this comes only by the practice 
we have been denied. Advocacy is a profession 
whose doors are still, in most countries, closed on 
women. Our brothers must therefore try to see 
through our imperfections of presentment something 
of that truth we have so long and so religiously with- 
held. 

TIME TABLE 

October, 1905 — December, 1906 

In the year 1905 the English public was rudely re- 
minded of the fact that there were little groups of peo- 
ple, here and there about the world, who believed in the 
principle of woman suffrage. 

Up to October of that year this belief had not se- 
riously inconvenienced anyone. 

On the eve of the return to power of the Liberal 
party a startling and, as it proved, highly inconvenient 
question was asked at a political meeting in Manchester 



WOMAN'S SECRET 19 

— a question which now sounds natural, necessary, mod- 
est. 

After listening to the array of fair promises made to 
men, two delegates of the Women's Social and Political 
Union asked what women had to hope from the incoming 
Government. 

The great majority of the general public never knew 
that the press reported the incident unfaithfully. Per- 
haps the reporters themselves did not know that when 
the meeting was announced the women had sent a request 
to the speaker of the evening, asking him to appoint a 
time to receive a deputation. Certainly the public did 
not know that this written request was not answered, nor 
even acknowledged. 

Nor did the mass of women understand that putting 
questions at political meetings (to the person who was 
there precisely for the purpose of outlining his party's 
plans, and presenting its claims to confidence) was a 
common practice — j ealously claimed and respectfully ac- 
corded — to men. We did not know that on the even- 
ing in question men had, as usual, interjected their ques- 
tions, wise or foolish, and had been answered with pa- 
tience and consideration. 

Even had we known the precise facts, I, for one, 
would not have understood their full significance, any 
more than did those in charge of the meeting. 

Nothing is easier than to be wise after the event. 
Each generation has not only to pay the penalty of its 
own blindness and blundering; each has to pay the 
" death duty " on that legacy of blindness and blunder- 
ing which has been left them by those who are gone. 

In common with the promoters of the meeting, who 
smiled, or frowned, at the question : " Will the Liberal 



20 WAY STATIONS 

Government give votes to women ? " — the general public 
either denounced or laughed at this sudden intrusion of 
the other sex into the public counsels of men. 

Few women had, as yet, any conception of the gulf 
between men's civility in private to women whom they 
know, and their incivility in public to women they do not 
know. Half a dozen highly instructive years were to 
pass before a Chancellor of the Exchequer was to amaze 
and further enlighten English women, by inciting the 
baser elements in public gatherings to maltreatment worse 
than brutish of women whose crime was their offering an 
inconvenient reminder of political promises unfulfilled. 
Seven years were to pass before the secret contempt of 
the public man for women's concern about public affairs 
was to find expression in the words of the member of the 
Illinois legislature voting against a children's Bill urged 
by Jane Addams and other experts — " those in favour 
are just a parcel of women." 

In 1905 few of us would have believed in the possi- 
bility of such an act, or such an utterance, from an 
accredited public servant. Prior to 1905 all but a neg- 
ligible fraction of women (and practically the whole 
masculine population) shared the belief that the half of 
the world which had control of public affairs, had in 
addition not only the ability but the will to safeguard 
the interests of women and children equally with the 
interests of men. 

If the protest against this view had not been silenced 
for the moment behind prison walls, the echo of the 
voices raised in Manchester would have been long in 
reaching the outside world. The prison wall acted as a 
sounding-board. Many of us who did not yet under- 
stand the message could not escape from puzzling at its 



WOMAN'S SECRET 91 

meaning. We heard that one of the women belonged to 
that class supposed to be the special charge and concern 
of the Liberal statesman — a mill hand, whose knowl- 
edge of women's needs was gained among the textile 
workers. The organised women in this industry, to the 
number of 96,000, had for some time been patiently ask- 
ing for the same power to safeguard their lives, as men 
of their class possessed. 

The other voice raised at the Manchester meeting was 
that of a girl who had distinguished herself at the uni- 
versity — the daughter of a well-known man who had 
lived and died labouring for the public good. 

Both of these " delegates " were quite young ; both 
gave an impression of being physically frail. What, we 
asked, lay behind their public insistence upon a view 
shared, after all, as even the casual reader knew, by 
John Stuart Mill and certain other intelligent, reputable 
people? What was involved in this old demand that 
young and able women should press it, in spite of blows 
in public, and the vague horrors of prison ? 

The question was answered for those who followed 
the English suffrage movement in the succeeding months. 

My own experience is that of many others who had 
little understanding of and no particle of sympathy with 
the first militant act. The speeches, lectures, and ex- 
planatory notes which follow show how from point to 
point I, and persons like myself, travelled the road of 
enlightenment. 

The year preceding the Prisoners' Banquet (given by 
the older Suffrage Societies to members of the new) saw 
the first active opposition during elections ever offered 
by women to the Government in power. 






22 WAY STATIONS 

i 

Astonishment on the part of the general public that 

this course should be pursued in the face of constant 
abuse, gave way, inch by inch, to a recognition that there 
must be more in this question of the vote than the mass of 
women had suspected. Those of us who were still dis- 
posed to discount the Suffragist's insistence on the 
urgency of the matter, could no longer doubt its impor- 
tance when we saw the strange shifts, the hypocrisies and 
brutalities in which certain men took refuge rather than 
concede the point, or even debate it fairly. 

I do not for a moment say that all opposition was of 
this nature. But there was enough of this, enough of 
every kind, to convince a growing number that, for good 
or ill, the privilege of putting a cross on a ballot paper 
conferred a power as far-reaching as the roots of civil- 
ised society. Not so much the militant women as those 
men who employed any and every means to drown the 
militant voices were responsible for sharpening our ears. 

The first great meeting of the newly constituted Lib- 
eral forces took place under the leadership of Sir Henry 
Campbell-Bannerman on December 21st, 1905, at the 
Albert Hall. The women present who dared ask that 
persons who are taxed should also be represented were 
flung out. Up and down the country they and others 
went, reminding Liberal leaders of Liberal principles, 
and paying for their temerity in abuse and bruised bodies. 

The non-militant Suffragists fared no better in their 
endeavour to win attention to the wishes of the unenfran- 
chised. The Women's Co-operative Guild, with 20,700 
members; the Women's Liberal Federation (76,000); 
The Scottish Women's Liberal Federation (15,000); The 
North of England Weavers' Association (100,000); 
The British Women's Temperance Association (109,- 



WOMAN'S SECRET 23 

890); The Independent Labour Party (20,000); the 
Textile Workers (96,000) and others joined in a mani- 
festo urging the need of giving women the protection of 
direct representation in Parliament. 

Many a woman learned her first lesson in present-day 
political values through realising that the earnest prayer 
of those tens of thousands of orderly, patient women had 
not been heard so clearly, or accorded a hundredth part 
of the attention won by the two militant voices crying in 
the wilderness of Manchester Liberals. 

In anticipation of the opening of Parliament, The 
Women's Social and Political Union, with a capital of 
<£2, opened a branch in London. Those who get their 
information from the newspapers might suppose, then as 
now, that the new Suffragists confined their activities to 
disturbing other people's meetings. As a matter of fact 
they were tireless in organising meetings of their own. 

They wrote to the new Premier to ask if he would re- 
ceive a deputation. The new Premier regretted that he 
could not spare the time. The new Suffragists regretted 
his mistaken view of the relative claims upon his time. 
They gave him notice of their intention to call at the offi- 
cial residence. In spite of discouragement, they suc- 
ceeded in giving a message to a secretary. To make 
sure of its not being forgotten, they wrote again, asking 
that a time might be appointed for a personal interview. 
The answer returned was evasive. The Suffragettes, as 
they were now popularly called, went once more to Down- 
ing Street. The police were summoned, and the women 
were arrested. They were, however, promptly released 
upon the intervention of the Premier, who now agreed 
to receive a deputation. 

Before the date fixed for receiving the representatives 



24 WAY STATIONS 

of the various societies, a Woman Suffrage resolution was 
brought before the House of Commons. On the evening 
of April 25th, 1906, this resolution was being talked out 
with every circumstance of indignity and insult, while a 
gallery-full of women looked down through the grille 
upon their champions and protectors. 

The authorities were, not unnaturally perhaps, afraid 
of some demonstration of disgust. As the time drew 
near for closing the debate, and before the indignation 
of the women found any open expression, they saw the 
back of the gallery filling with policemen. Realising 
that their time for action was now reduced to a few mo- 
ments, two women called out to the legislators below: 
" We refuse to have the resolution talked out." " Di- 
vide ! Divide ! " Through the obnoxious grille a third 
woman thrust a little flag and the now famous legend 
" Votes for Women " made its first appearance in the 
House of Commons. 

The gallery was forcibly cleared, and those who could 
not see below the surface of things said and believed 
(with a simplicity often displayed since) that but for 
the impatience of the Suffragettes the resolution would 
have been carried, and women would have promptly been 
invited to inscribe their names on the parliamentary reg- 
ister. 

The deputation to the Prime Minister on May 19th 
elicited the fact of his belief in and sympathy with the 
cause. Besides that — nothing but a recommendation of 
patience (a recommendation which he afterwards re- 
scinded in favour of a policy of "pestering"). 

The Suffragettes left Downing Street to assemble a 
little later in Trafalgar Square. Similar indignation 
meetings were repeated throughout London and the prov- 



WOMAN'S SECRET 25 

inces in the days that followed. The old Suffragist pol- 
icy- of wasting time and energy in making ineffectual 
friends was definitely abandoned by the W.S.P.U. The 
new policy of fixing responsibility where it belonged was 
vigorously prosecuted. In the course of demonstrations 
at the meetings, or the houses of official persons, more 
and more women were arrested and sent to prison. 

Every demonstration made the issue clear to new 
friends. Every arrest won fresh recruits. The release 
of each batch of prisoners was the signal for a great 
meeting of welcome. 

These functions were presided over by Mrs. or Miss 
Christabel Pankhurst, or by Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, 
who with her husband had come into the Union shortly 
after the establishment of the London Branch. 

This is not the place for any detailed account of the 
two chief founders of the Union, Mrs. Pankhurst and 
her daughter Christabel. But I am sure they would 
agree with me that nothing had happened since the 
founding that was so fortunate for the cause as Mrs. 
Pankhurst's enlisting the sympathy and support of the 
Pethick Lawrences — the woman with her genius for 
public life, her imagination, and her fervour; the man 
with his distinguished qualities of mind and heart, his 
level-headed business capacity, combined with a generos- 
ity of spirit which made his gifts of money to the Union 
seem small beside those gifts of greater price. 

In spite of new and stringent rules governing the ad- 
mission of women into even the outer courts of the House 
of Commons, Mrs. Pethick Lawrence and others accom- 
panied Mrs. Pankhurst to the lobby on October 3rd, 
1906, the day of the reassembling of Parliament. A 
message was sent to the Prime Minister, through the 



26 WAY STATIONS 

Chief Whip, asking whether the Government proposed to 
do anything that session in the direction of granting 
votes to women. The Liberal Whip returned with the 
answer that the Government could not hold out the small- 
est hope of their taking any step in the direction desired 
by the women. 

Upon this, a protest took place in the lobby. Some 
of the women stood on the settees and addressed the 
throng which was waiting to interview members. Mrs. 
Pankhurst was thrown to the ground, and among those 
subsequently arrested were Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, Miss 
Annie Kenny, Mrs. Cobden Sanderson, and many others. 
At Rochester Row a curious and instructive trial ended 
in the prisoners being sent to Holloway Gaol. 

The by-election at Huddersfield presented a good op- 
portunity for acquainting another section of the public 
with the Government's interpretation of Liberal princi- 
ples. The size and success of the Women's Social and 
Political Union's meetings, the inconvenience to Liberal 
speakers of trying to explain why Richard Cobden's 
daughter was in prison for the crime of showing that she 
had inherited that concern about the public welfare for 
which Liberals revered the memory of her father — these 
causes led the Government to liberate Mrs. Cobden San- 
derson and her companions before the expiration of their 
sentence. 

The Constitutional Suffragists, able at that time to see 
the service which was rendered to the old cause by these 
new adherents, determined to give the released prisoners 
a public welcome. 

That the principle of militancy had, in the early days, 
the sympathy and support of the National Union of 
Suffrage Societies is a fact recalled by the circumstances 



WOMAN'S SECRET 27 

in which the following speech was delivered, and is one 
of the two reasons why an otherwise unimportant utter- 
ance may be printed. The other reason is that Liberal 
objectors to militancy were herein reminded that out of 
the mass of women asking for the vote (women of di- 
vers temperaments, upbringing, and political creeds), the 
section most furiously attacked by Liberals were those 
members of the Women's Social and Political Union 
who showed a disposition to agree with one of Mr. W. E. 
Gladstone's most famous utterances - — quoted at the 
Savoy banquet for the first time in connection with the 
Women's Movement. This quotation has been recalled 
often since, and with peculiar effectiveness in the 1908 
trial of the Suffrage Leaders, during which Mr. Lloyd 
George and the then Home Secretary, Mr. Herbert 
Gladstone, were put into the witness-box, cross-examined 
by Miss Pankhurst, and reminded of the words of the 
father of one man, and greatest among the leaders of the 
party to which both witnesses belonged. 



II 

THE PRISONERS' BANQUET* 

Mrs. Fawcett, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

I am called upon to propose a toast that needs lit- 
tle commending here. I think we all realise that the 
publicly expressed sympathy of a representative 
gathering, such as this, is a fact of no small signifi- 
cance. 

But an even more wonderful thing is true. There 
is now a large company outside these walls who say 
when the question of Woman Suffrage is broached: 
" I am in favour." We have it on the authority of 
the late Prime Minister that four hundred and 
twenty Members of Parliament stand committed to 
this Cause. 

We are told that the gracious-sounding phrase 
" I am in favour " is on the lips even of Cabinet 
Ministers. 

There is something almost monotonous about the 
unanimity with which the eminent are in favour of 
this measure. 

We do hear that legislators still betray a disposi- 
tion to be dumb, in public, before the question, yet 
even they (the great majority of them), if speak 
they must, feel constrained to proclaim their favour. 

* Speech delivered at the Savoy Hotel, Dec. 11, 1906. 

28 



THE PRISONERS' BANQUET 29 

The strange thing is that so much favour should 
be so ineffectual. I hope fair-minded men will re- 
member that, when they criticise " methods." 

They are not to forget that their " favour " left 
the question where it was. 

It is rather as if you were told: "Oh, yes, you 
women may cultivate your gardens. But you 
mustn't use spades. They are too heavy for your 
delicate hands. And they are dirty — spades are ! 
Besides, spades are for men ! " That was settled 
as long ago as the days when Adam delved and Eve 
span. I don't doubt but Adam thought, as the 
remnant of the unenlightened do still, that it would 
be dangerous to discuss public affairs with a woman. 

To allow her to contract the unfeminine habit of 
expressing her opinions, would be to teach her that 
she shared the most effectual weapon in all man's 
armoury. For no one denies the Power of the Word. 
I saw a fresh exemplification of that power the other 
day, at Huddersfield. I saw politicians and worthy 
burgesses stopping in the streets certain ladies who 
are here to-night ; I heard men, young and old and 
middle-aged, arguing and remonstrating! Not be- 
cause women believed this or that, but because they 
were saying they believed these things — and say- 
ing so, most reprehensibly, where everybody could 
hear. 

This attitude on the part of men is, I gather, not 
peculiar to Huddersfield. Before there was a Hud- 
dersfield, from the earliest times, after men had sub- 



SO WAY STATIONS 

duecl woman's wilfulness, taught her back bending, 
taught her feet to run at their bidding and her hands 
to fetch and carry — when every other member had 
been brought under control men still had dark mis- 
givings about woman's tongue. So they praised 
silence, and they heaped scorn on the talking woman. 
To this day when they lament that now and then 
she so far forgets the lesson of the ages as to use her 
tongue in private, men shake their heads and remind 
one another that the end of the world would come if 
once she were allowed to talk in the Council House. 
No one knew this better than the women who 
did the talking on October 23rd. 1 It was their way 
of announcing the end of the world — the end of 
the world as it had been. You all know how they 
paid the price in that grim place, His Majesty's 
Prison at Holloway. When we think of what they 
went through there, when we think of what they have 
suffered from the tongues and pens of people safe 
outside — oh, very safe, indeed, from ever running 
a risk for conscience sake! safe from daring to do 
anything unpopular ; impregnably safe from any 
temptation to cast in their lot with the weak and the 
" unrepresented "— - when we think of these things 
to-night, we are proud of the type of woman the 
suffrage cause has forced to the front. And in the 
Woman's Cause what aspect more important than 
this? — that they should be women capable of taking 
" the long view,* 9 able to realise that it may be 

1 In the lobby of the House of Commons. 



THE PRISONERS' BANQUET 31 

necessary for the achievement of a higher, better 
order that a temporary disorder should stir the 
sluggishness of the world. History tells us that is 
the spirit in which fundamental political Reform is 
born. In defence of Mr. Chamberlain's threat in 
1884 to march 100,000 men from Birmingham to 
London in support of the Franchise Bill — Mr. 
Gladstone put his views on record in these terms : 
" I am sorry to say that if no instructions had ever 
been addressed in political crises to the people of this 
country except to hate violence and love order and 
exercise patience, the liberties of this country would 
never have been attained." 

Now the lesson conveyed in these words is a lesson 
learned more readily by men than by women. We, 
you know, are the law-abiding section of the com- 
munity. 

In those parts of the world where women are en- 
franchised, they go on obeying the old laws until by 
constitutional means they can get them bettered. 

We have present, I see, a recent visitor to the Isle 
of Man, who was shown among other public insti- 
tutions, a prison and the excellent accommodation, 
for fifty men and nine women. " Where do you put 
the other women-prisoners?" asked the traveller. 
" Oh, we never have more than nine," was the an- 
swer. As against fifty of the oposite sex! Yet 
the Isle of Man is a sort of Isle of Woman, since, 
as you know, women have votes there. But what- 
ever evil effect their voting may entail, it does not 



82 WAY STATIONS 

make law-breakers of our sex. Perhaps the greater 
proportion of men-criminals is due to some defect in 
the education of men. We remember the answer 
given by a rural teacher to the question, " Whether 
proper attention was being paid to the morals of the 
boys under his care?" "Oh," he said, "we don't 
teach morals here. That belongs to the girls' de- 
partment." 

It is out of that department that this new in- 
fluence has come. Already it has wrought so pow- 
erfully that fewer and ever fewer are found willing 
to say ■ — in public — that women should be asked 
to do their work in the world's garden without the 
essential spade. 

No one denies that the parliamentary vote is the 
working man's best tool. The other day a letter 
was published in " The Times," on the subject of 
industrial conditions in New Zealand. That letter 
told us, " the ballot-box is the only social weapon." 

Those persons who would persuade us that this 
fact has no application to our sex, must count on 
our not knowing that 82 per cent, of the women of 
this country are wage-earning women. They must 
count on our not knowing that since the extension 
of the male franchise the wages of men have gone 
up, and the wages of women have gone down. They 
must count on our not knowing that the average 
wage for a working woman is 7s. 6d. a week; while 
the average wage of the working man is a pound. 
To the honour of our sex these facts have only 



THE PRISONERS' BANQUET 33 

had to be known to the better-off women in order to 
inspire many of them with a sense of responsibility 
towards their less fortunate sisters. Women are at 
last learning to look to women for help. 

While we gratefully acknowledge the support of 
many good men, we owe to our opponents a great 
and valuable discovery, and that is : the education as 
well as the power that comes of women's working to- 
gether. I will admit that I think it is a better and 
a more civilised combination when men and women 
labour together for the same ends. But that ulti- 
mate co-operation will come the more easily and more 
honourably, after we have learnt how strong we are 
when women support women. 

We see every day now the thing that we were told 
would never happen. We see women of different 
education, different fortunes and associations all 
pulling together, all working with enthusiasm for a 
common end. The first thing that struck me about 
the first person I came to know in the Women's 
Social and Political Union was, her faith in her co- 
workers and her hearty admiration of them. Women 
have looked at the world so long through the eyes of 
men, that they must bear with us for a little space 
(till the re-adjustment comes) while we look at af- 
fairs from what is called the woman's point of 
view. 

For instance, we agree that a voice soft and low is 
an excellent thing in its place. But if you are being 
robbed, or if you are drowning and you say "help," 



34 WAY STATIONS 

who is to blame if nobody notices? If her child is 
perishing in a burning house, the woman who stops 
to consider what the man in the street will think of 
the timbre of her voice, is a poor creature and a guilty 
mother. 

I may say, in conclusion, that while it seems ob- 
vious that women will presently obtain the right to 
vote " upon the same terms " (as the phrase goes) 
" as that right is or is to be enjoyed by men, 55 I am 
far from sure (though here I speak for myself 
alone), I am far from sure that the " right 55 will be 
much "enjoyed 55 by the women who are called on 
to pay the heaviest price for it. It is an argument 
for haste that should the Suffrage be granted to- 
morrow, the world may still have to wait for the 
generation that is to grow up in the exercise of pub- 
lic duty, before women can take the personal satis- 
faction in it that so many men do. I should like to 
emphasise this as my last word, since the issue is 
overlaid with cheap charges of notoriety-hunting 
and of hysteria. 

Many of us believe self-control to be the highest 
expression of civilisation. But we also believe that 
nothing less than a sense of duty and a resolute self- 
mastery could bring women of the character of those 
who have done most for this Cause to face the mis- 
understanding, the hideous discomforts, and the 
lasting hurt to health that they have been called 
to bear. Every fair-minded person must realise it is 
very hard for women to face these things. It was 



THE PRISONERS' BANQUET 35 

George Eliot, I believe, who spoke with envy of those 
who could lead what she called " the sheltered life." 
When woman as a sex considers her own dignity and 
satisfaction alone, it is the shelter that she chooses. 
I am reminded of that happy tribe in the inclement 
North called the Acheto-Tinneh, which being inter- 
preted out of the Esquimau tongue is: The People 
Who Live Out of the Wind. 

Enviable folk these, for in the Arctic it is not 
still cold, but the wind that kills. The vast majority 
of women would belong to the Acheto-Tinneh if 
they could with honour — though some of you may 
tell me that preference has its origin in the defects 
in our training. But, as I say, the women of the 
future, brought up in the exercise of public duty, 
may find it not duty alone, but pleasure as well. 

For this generation, the fighting and the sacrifice. 
But Richard Cobden's great-granddaughter will be 
able to say with the poet: 

" L'o . . . how deep the corn 
Along the battlefield." 

I have the honour to propose the toast : " Success 
to the Cause of Women's Suffrage." 

TIME TABLE 

December, 1906 — June, 1907 

Meetings and demonstrations continued; arrests were 
frequent, and the violence of the stewards at political 



36 WAY STATIONS 

gatherings (and, in those days, the violence of the police 
in the streets) were a painful feature of the advance of 
the Woman's Question into the sphere of practical pol- 
itics. 

In February, 1907, three days before Parliament met, 
the non-militants assembled at Hyde Park Corner, and 
marched in rain and mud to Exeter Hall, where they 
called on the Government to redeem the promises made 
to Constitutional Suffragists. 

In this same month a so-styled " Parliament of 
Women " was convened in Caxton Hall, under the chair- 
manship of Mrs. Pankhurst, to consider the " King's 
Speech " of the day before. As this document was found 
to contain no mention of the needs or wishes of women, 
the meeting resolved to send a deputation (under the con- 
duct of Mrs. Despard) pledged to reach either the 
King's representative (the Prime Minister) or prison. 

That was the first occasion upon which I saw mounted 
policemen riding down little bands of women and girls; 
and even (as I was myself to experience) charging 
against solitary women whom the momentum of a driven 
crowd, or the onset of excited horses, had detached from 
a group of friends. 

There was an abundance of strange new knowledge 
to be picked up that night, even by those who had not 
joined the little deputation headed by the white-haired 
benefactress of East London poor. But others have 
described the scenes which ended in the arrest of fifty- 
seven bruised, dishevelled women and two men. The lit- 
tle room at the rear of Caxton Hall was filled with the 
hurt or spent, who had been rescued by their comrades 
and taken to shelter. 

The prisoners, including Mrs. Despard, were given 



THE PRISONERS 5 BANQUET 37 

the usual summary police-court trial, and sent to Hollo- 
way Gaol. 

The languishing cause of Woman Suffrage was now 
so thoroughly alive that, upon Mr. Dickinson's intro- 
duction of a private member's Bill for the Enfranchise- 
ment of Women, those who were opposed to the measure 
felt the necessity of forming a Woman's Anti-Suffrage 
Society — the first that the growing seriousness of the 
issue had called into being. 

As a sign of the waking-up of the hitherto politically 
inert mass of women, the " Anti " Society was welcomed 
by the farther-sighted among Suffragists. In the death 
of the old indifference the first decisive battle was won. 

The Anti-Suffragists presented two petitions to Par- 
liament against Mr. Dickinson's Bill during the month 
of March, 1907. When these documents came to be offi- 
cially examined, they were rejected by the Petitions Com- 
mittee of Parliament as " informal." The names were 
found to be written on separate sheets which did not set 
forth the object for which the signatures were designed. 
There was nothing to show that the persons giving their 
names knew for what. Another fact damaging to the 
authenticity of the petitions was that whole batches of 
signatures were discovered to have been written in by a 
single hand. But, as has been pointed out, had these 
petitions, bearing 87*500 names, seemed genuine enough 
to be accepted by Parliament, they would have been a 
negligible number as compared with the subscribers to 
the great memorials in support of Woman Suffrage. 

The more practical women had come to realise that, 
could the question have been much affected by petitions, 
women would now be voting. 

So, while the great body of militants were carrying 



38 WAY STATIONS 

forward, from divers centres, the work of educating the 
public to understand a more effectual policy — that pol- 
icy, in the form of direct pressure on the Government, 
was being actively prosecuted. 

An instantaneous good result was manifest in the clear- 
ing away of some of that fog of futile " sympathy with 
the Cause/' which had so long hidden from women the 
more serious obstacles between them and political free- 
dom. The Prime Minister (Sir H. Campbell-Banner- 
man) found that a mere expression of " belief in the 
principle " did not satisfy these terribly practical Suffra- 
gettes. He saw himself obliged either to go forward or 
to go back. He went back — on the plea that Mr. Dick- 
inson's Bill was not sufficiently democratic. 

Women were to find that always a Bill for their en- 
franchisement is either too democratic or not democratic 
enough to suit so-called friends of the suffrage in Par- 
liament. The measure was talked out by a Liberal Mem- 
ber. 

A second " Woman's Parliament " was held at Caxton 
Hall on the afternoon of March 20th, 1907. Another 
deputation, led this time by a Suffragist of the old school, 
Lady Harberton, made the attempt to carry to the Prime 
Minister a resolution passed unanimously by the meet- 
ing. 

The police were out in great force, and the struggle 
that followed was the most protracted that the women 
had yet engaged in. Caxton Hall was kept open from 
2 p. m. till late in the evening — a refuge for the dis- 
abled. After an interval of rest and succour, those suf- 
ficiently recovered went back into the fight. Mrs. Mary 
Leigh, who was later to shorten a five years' sentence of 
penal servitude to a fiercely contested hunger-strike of 



THE PRISONERS' BANQUET 39 

forty- four days, was arrested on this occasion, the first 
of many times. A hundred and thirty women were sent 
to prison. 

Throughout the spring of this year a vigorous cam- 
paign was carried on at the by-elections. The women 
found how many friends they had even amongst the re- 
mote and provincial public. Equally gratifying, they 
found how more and more the friends and agents of the 
Government objected to the presence of Suffragettes at 
by-elections — drawing larger audiences than Liberal 
speakers could, and (most inconvenient of all) telling 
those audiences the history, past and present, of Liberal 
treatment of women. 

This and subsequent campaigns did much to strengthen 
the forces of the Women's Social and Political Union 
by developing a body of first-rate public speakers. 
Aside from great natural orators like the Pankhursts, 
some of the best public speakers in England (or, as I 
believe, in any country) are the Suffragettes trained in 
the rude school of the hustings. 






Ill 

THE FEMINISTE MOVEMENT IN ENGLAND * 

I am one of those who, until comparatively recently, 
was an ignorant opponent of Woman Suffrage. I 
felt that what we women needed was more educa- 
tion, more discipline, rather than more liberty, not 
realising that the higher discipline can come only 
through liberty. 

I was not alone in my error. It turns out that 
not only have men a great deal still to learn about 
women, but that women have a great deal to learn 
about themselves. I have been prosecuting my edu- 
cation in this direction almost daily since a certain 
memorable afternoon in Trafalgar Square when I 
first heard women talking politics in public. I went 
out of shamefaced curiosity, my head full of mascu- 
line criticism as to woman's limitations, her well- 
known inability to stick to the point, her poverty in 
logic and in humour, and the impossibility, in any 
case, of her coping with the mob. 

I had found in my own heart hitherto no firm 
assurance that these charges were not anchored in 
fact. But on that Sunday afternoon, in front of 
Nelson's Monument, a new chapter was begun for 
me in the lesson of faith in the capacities of women. 

* Published in Collier's Weekly, June 29, 1907. 

40 



THE FEMINISTE MOVEMENT 41 

Talking about it afterward with a well-known Lon- 
don editor, I found him sorrowfully admitting the 
day was coming when the vote could no longer be 
withheld from women. " But when they get it," he 
asked, " won't we find they've lost more than they've 
gained?" He spoke of the deteriorating effect of 
public life on men. If it bore so hardly on the 
stronger masculine fibre, what effect must it have on 
the delicate, impressionable nature of woman? How 
shall she preserve what is best in character after 
tasting the intoxication of political victory or the 
humiliation of political defeat? 

" I am ready to believe you," he said, " when you 
tell me these Suffragists can rule and sway the 
London crowds. But isn't it very bad for women, 
all this publicity and concentration of attention on 
themselves ? " 

I answered that I was perhaps not so bad a per- 
son to whom to put that question, since I had spent 
a good part of my adult existence under conditions 
where I could see the effect on character of just 
these fierce tests, save that in the theatre they oper- 
ate innocent of political significance. 

In common with many others of my old craft, I 
had seen how the actor's necessary preoccupation 
with things of the imagination may divorce him from 
the larger realities of life. His necessary concern 
about himself tends to impoverish his intellectual 
life, narrowing down existence till for him all the 
world's a stage in very truth, and all men merely 



42 WAY STATIONS 

" parts. 55 But the great difference, in the common 
effect on character, between doing work on the stage 
and doing it in the political arena, seems accounted 
for by the difference between the ambition that is 
obliged to concern itself with one 5 s own advantage, 
and the ambition that is obliged to concern itself 
with the advantage of other people. 

If I am to judge by the women I see working to 
win the suffrage in England, there is something civ- 
ilising, ennobling, in giving up your life to the 
furtherance of a great impersonal object. When 
women, such as these I speak of, stand up in public 
to talk reform, their high earnestness, their forget- 
fulness of themselves, lends them a dignity that 
made my answer to the question of the London edi- 
tor as easy as it was honourable to the disfranchised 
sex. 

We have come to a point in England where there 
is little need, and indeed little opportunity, to com- 
bat argument. The opponents of Woman's Suf- 
frage own, with engaging frankness, that their 
prejudices against the innovation are irremovable. 
If these obstructionists are not too old in years or 
in spirit, they will presently be advancing to the 
stool of repentance. If, however, their prejudices 
are indeed irremovable, they themselves are not. 
Those who, in the natural order, are to take their 
place will see the matter otherwise, for the future 
is on the side of woman's freedom. So keenly is 
this felt that in the hundreds of meetings, public 



THE FEMINISTE MOVEMENT 43 

and private, held throughout England for the 
ventilation of the subject, the prime difficulty en- 
countered of late in getting up a debate is to find 
anybody who can be induced to oppose the notion. 
Has it been discovered that all the telling arguments, 
witty or wise, are on the side of the reform? 

The old-fashioned opponent, with his jargon about 
" short hair and the shrieking sisterhood," sees all 
his poor little dingy rags of ridicule blown to the 
winds of heaven, and he seems able to find nothing 
new. 

One of the signs of the reserve force behind the 
movement is that everything ministers to it. The 
police magistrate sends groups of unknown women 
to Holloway Gaol. They come out public char- 
acters, hot with tales of abuses in the prison system 
and the crying need for matrons and women in- 
spectors. The authorities try to avoid repeating 
their error by making all such inconvenient prisoners 
thereafter first-class misdemeanants, and thus en- 
sure their seeing less and having less material with 
which to stir the public conscience. But the public 
is quick to detect the fear behind the seeming 
leniency of the authorities. 

Then again, at a later stage of the agitation, the 
police magistrate, in trying a fresh batch of pris- 
oners, endeavours to rouse public indignation 
against the leaders of the movement by sternly re- 
buking them for allowing a mill girl of seventeen 
to come up from the provinces to assist in a London 



44 WAY STATIONS 

demonstration, in the course of which the girl was 
arrested, — that being nothing less than what she 
had come for. She was a Lancashire delegate, rep- 
resentative of hundreds more who could not come 
themselves. The magistrate was full of a noble 
rage at " the cruelty of turning a girl of such tender 
age loose in London, 9 ' as he expressed it. He 
seemed to count on setting men's hearts aflame at 
the bare idea of a young girl in the streets without 
her mother. That she should be in the London 
streets to testify to her interest in the laws govern- 
ing women's honest work, that was indeed shameful ! 

" Why, this child, 59 said the Magistrate, " should 
be at school ! " And the outburst of wise and manly 
tenderness was reported in every paper in the land. 

The working women opened incredulous eyes. 
They are so used to hearing their own ignorance 
urged against their claim to vote, that they were 
stark amazed to find how strangely benighted are 
these great London gentlemen about the conditions 
governing the lives of the women they make laws for. 
School at seventeen? Why, this girl, like many 
more, had been earning her living in a mill since 
she was twelve, rising in the dawn, tramping cold 
and half-fed, to her work, and returning wearily 
through slums whose haggard realism left this pre- 
maturely old " hand " of seventeen little to learn 
from London, even if she had no friends here, which 
of course is not the case. No woman, however 



THE FEMINISTE MOVEMENT 45 

lonely, who joins the English Suffrage Movement 
but has friends. . . . 

TIME TABLE 

June, 1907 — March, 1908 

During a reconstitution of the Union which took place in 
September, 1907, the faith and affection which Mrs. and 
Miss Pankhurst and their immediate allies had inspired 
were put to a triumphant test. That these were the peo- 
ple, and the only people, who could conduct this particu- 
lar agitation at this most difficult and critical moment, 
was recognised by the great majority who had come in 
contact with that very remarkable group. 

The following month brought another event of far- 
reaching importance, not only to the fortunes of the 
Union, but to the organised effectiveness of the whole 
progressive movement. 

Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence launched a newspaper, de- 
signed to give the public that information which Suffra- 
gists had hitherto looked for vainly in the press; infor- 
mation not only about the more sensational side of the 
propaganda, but about the steady, ceaseless, educational 
work that was being done, as well as general information 
bearing on the political status of women. No paper has 
ever been served with such devotion and ingenuity as 
" Votes for Women." Its astonishingly rapid growth 
from a little two-page sheet, issued monthly, to the 
weekly paper known and quoted all over the world, is 
due not only to the combination of political insight and 
business ability of the Pankhursts and the Lawrences, 



46 WAY STATIONS 

but to the vigorous co-operation they possessed the secret 
of winning from their friends and followers. 

Members of the Union responded to the call that they 
should charge themselves with the business of securing 
regular subscribers, and that they should buy batches of 
the paper to distribute broadcast. Then realising that 
what people get for nothing they are likely to value at 
nothing, women who had never sold anything in their 
lives before stood in the streets offering u g Votes for 
Women/ one penny." Not only were tens of thousands 
of copies sold outright in this way, and many new sub- 
scribers added; the sellers became centres of a quiet but 
enormously effective propaganda. 

Seeing the paper solidly established, with its circula- 
tion steadily increasing, Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence handed 
it over to the Union. Hundreds and thousands of people 
who could not come to the meetings were drawn into the 
movement through the medium of the paper. Where 
the mass of newspapers reported only the more sensa- 
tional militant acts, readers of " Votes for Women " were 
kept informed as well of all the many-sided educational 
propaganda which was tirelessly going on, though unre- 
ported elsewhere. 

Between May and October of that year the Union 
alone held 3,000 meetings. Other political meetings were 
left unreminded of all this active interest women were 
taking in publ'c affairs, unless those other meetings were 
addressed by Cabinet Ministers. Their joint responsi- 
bility for the Government neglect of women's claims was 
not allowed to be forgotten. The Suffragettes on these 
occasions were almost invariably set upon by the stewards, 
and not infrequently struck at by Liberal " gentlemen " 
sitting in the audience — a proceeding which taught 



THE FEMINISTE MOVEMENT 47 

many an onlooker more about politics in a minute than 
a statesman could teach in a lifetime. 

The harsh and costly lesson never failed to make new 
friends for the Cause, or to convert some tepid adherent 
into a fervid worker. Those who could not help in one 
way sought and found other ways. Women whom nat- 
ural disqualification or ill-health prevented from serving 
as public speakers, gave money to defray the expenses 
of others. When there was no more money to give, they 
got up entertainments; wrote gratis for the paper; sold 
it in the streets, and at theatre doors ; gave lectures — 
and in these lesser ways showed their sympathy with and 
their admiration of the women who were bearing the bur- 
den of by-elections and meeting worse than blows as 
deputation after deputation forced its way to Westmin- 
ster. 

In February, 1908, the arrest of fifty more women for 
their share in this errand led to the turning up of an old 
Act of the time of Charles II, relating to " Tumultuous 
Petitions." In future, women were warned, anyone of 
the unenfranchised sex who came too near the Houses of 
Parliament with a petition was to be tried and punished 
on the plan invented a couple of centuries before, to 
harass and defeat the early strivings of men towards 
political freedom. 

Perhaps the significance of the parallel discouraged 
the threatened application of the Act. For after the 
next demonstration (which followed smartly upon the 
threat) Mrs. Pankhurst and the other women were given 
the same insulting and now familiar police-court trial, 
and the usual alternative of paying a fine or going to 
prison. 

While they were in prison another Woman's Enfran- 



48 WAY STATIONS 

chisement Bill scored a majority of 179 in its second 
reading in the House of Commons. However, its pro- 
moter, Mr. Stanger, became entangled in that " parlia- 
mentary procedure " — which women are so often asked 
to regard as respectworthy and ineluctable. The ad- 
vantage of the majority in favour was lost. 

Three years later I was to ask a Liberal Member of 
Parliament what had brought him to believe, as he now 
professes, in the righteousness and the inevitability of 
the triumph of Woman Suffrage. " It has come to be a 
practical issue/' he said. 

Thinking to hear of some new light on woman's needs, 
or on man's discovery that her Cause is his own, " When 
did you come to ' see ' it ? " I asked. 

" When the women raised a fighting fund of a hun- 
dred thousand pounds," he said. 

Liberalism. 

At the Albert Hall meeting of March 19th the idea 
of the treasurer, Mrs. Lawrence, had been to leave Mrs. 
Pankhurst's seat on the platform empty till, after an 
appeal for funds, the great arm-chair might be filled 
with the cheques, bank-notes, and promise cards col- 
lected. By one of those happy chances which often fall 
to the lot of the Union, the prison authorities (upon what 
pretext I do not now remember) forestalled the date of 
Mrs. Pankhurst's release. Her unexpected appearance 
in the hall created an immense sensation. The eloquence 
of the empty chair, from which so much had been hoped, 
was pale and ineffectual beside the appeal made by the 
woman who came out of the grey solitude of a prison 
cell straight into the brilliance and enthusiasm of a 
Woman's Social and Political Union mass meeting. 



THE FEMINISTE MOVEMENT 49 

In the space of a few moments <£7>000 was subscribed 
to the fighting fund. 

But for a struggle so great as the far-sighted saw still 
lay before women, the problem was ever how to raise 
more money and make more converts. From every an- 
gle, political and private, those waiting to be convinced 
must be reached and drawn into the ranks. 



IV 

SUFFRAGE CAMP REVISITED* 

Miss Christabel Pankhurst, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

I have come a great way to perform a small duty. 
Yet far as London is from Florida, those leagues 
of land and sea may not, in some eyes, seem to con- 
stitute the chief obstacle in the way of my ad- 
dressing you about a matter of political moment. 

The English people have often listened to comment 
upon English affairs from men of foreign birth. 
But, I am told, for a woman, not a subject of the 
King, to pick a flaw in that proudest of your na- 
tional boasts — the Freedom of the Briton — - would 
be to show herself unwarrantably meddlesome. 

There are two considerations which prevent my 
holding that view, even though recently reminded 
that it is shared by one of the military heroes of this 
country. He has asked me how a person who has 
not convinced her own countrymen of the wisdom 
of enfranchising women, dares raise her voice in this 
domestic quarrel? 

There are obvious reasons why most people con- 
fine their activities to the land of their birth ; though 
to do so has not been the distinguishing character- 

* A lecture given at the Portman Rooms, London, March, 
1908. 

50 



SUFFRAGE CAMP REVISITED 51 

istic of the English. You had a saying that, years 
ago, touched the imagination of the world. " No 
slave," your fathers said, " could breathe in Eng- 
lish air." The moment one of our unfranchised ne- 
groes set foot upon your soil, that instant he stood 
forth free. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, that was not what hap- 
pened in my case. I can no more acquire citizen 
rights in England, than I can claim them in Ken- 
tucky, or in Florida. I find something fitting 
therefore, in the fact that one of the sex discrimi- 
nated against should point out where the English 
boast breaks down. 

But my real answer to the charge of the soldier 
before mentioned, and my answer to any objector 
here is, first and foremost: this of yours is not a 
" mere domestic quarrel." It is the working out of 
the most fundamental problem of civilisation. 

All who keep abreast of foreign news know in 
how many directions, and how far, your English 
voices are reverberating. I myself am too recently 
returned from America not to know how closely over 
there they are following your agitation, getting 
from it enlightenment and courage for their own 
different task. The eyes of all women are upon the 
English Suffragists. The hopes of thousands of 
women you will never so much as hear of, and the 
fate of their children's children, are largely in your 
keeping. So my first answer to the suggestion that 
I should attend to my own affairs is: this is my af- 



52 WAY STATIONS 

fair. The battlefield is English soil, but the issue 
belongs to the human race. 

My second answer to the charge of officious inter- 
ference is that your Cause is even peculiarly my 
affair. England owed me nothing, and has given 
to me with both hands. I have lived in London 
more than twice as long as I have lived in any other 
one place since I was born. I have paid taxes here for 
seventeen years without diminishing my debt. Here 
in London I have spent the best of my life and have 
done here the most rewarding of the little work I 
have accomplished. Living in your midst for all 
these years, having found happiness as well as bread 
and friendship here — how is it possible that I 
should take so much at your hands and feel I need 
not give you even sympathy in return? 

Just as I find it impossible to divorce the inter- 
ests of men and women, so in this long debt of mine 
I cannot remember women's claim upon me without 
acknowledging the claim of men. Yet, as my con- 
ception of the larger good for this country and for 
the civilised world, does not march with — that of my 
soldier-friend, for instance, let us for a moment 
look into the causes that lie at the root of our differ- 
ence. 

In the first place, let those of us who are Suffra- 
gists admit the present state of things to be the 
common misfortune of men and women. 

Some of you may not agree with me when I say 
that women have had a large share, if not in bring- 



SUFFRAGE CAMP REVISITED 53 

ing about the conditions we are attacking, at least in 
keeping them as they are. 

I must assume that you are all familiar by this 
time with the arguments in favour of Woman Suf- 
frage and with the answers to the few — the beg- 
garly little array of serious objections. Among 
the reasons why this Cause does not march forward 
to an even speedier triumph than ultimately awaits 
it, I will speak to-night of three: 

1. The unreasoned, instinctive clinging, on the 
part of men, to the idea of male superiority. 

2. The comparative poverty of women, even in 
well-to-do families. 

3. The deadening illusion entertained about, and 
shared by, the " Exceptional Woman." 

Taking these obstacles in their order, we have 
first to deal with the masculine prejudice in man's 
own favour. This, if looked at fairly, is nothing 
worse in its origin than the feeling every healthy 
boy (or girl) brings with it into the world: namely, 
that there is nothing upon the earth so important 
as itself. The current idea of the difference in value 
of the two sexes, seems to grow out of the fact that 
in the case of the girl the wholly natural and quite 
essential first conception (having served its pur- 
pose) is early corrected and " put away " along with 
other " childish things." This comes about, not 
through any special grace or wisdom on the part of 
woman, but through the lessoning of circumstance. 

In man, the preliminary notion about his place 



54 WAY STATIONS 

in the universe is corrected late by an effort of the 
reason, or it is indulged in to the end. 

I am afraid there is no doubt but what, in the 
common survival of this early view of man's im- 
portance, we women have our discreditable share. 

Who among us here can lay her hand on her heart 
and say : I never flattered the idea of " sex su- 
periority " in any man ? I never tried, in the cause 
of peace and pleasantness, to perpetuate for an 
hour that ancient error? 

Among all the people in this room I do not feel 
sure of — but one. 

I am not that one. 

Can you believe that women have not had a share 
— a very large share ■ — in obscuring the truth for 
such as the eminent Professor, who recently wrote to 
a London paper, to say he feared men were not op- 
posing with sufficient energy this lamentable and 
growing agitation for Woman Suffrage? He 
sounded a piercing bugle-call to waken his too-con- 
fiding brethren to their common danger. Did men 
realise, he asked, all that was being imperilled? Did 
they not know that if woman got the Vote she would 
no longer care to make the home beautiful? Not 
only that. He says she would give up " dancing 
and singing " for man's diversion. Much as man, 
according to this sprightly biologist, would lose by 
the arrangement, the opposite sex would gain noth- 
ing. " Woman," says the man of science, " can only 
gain" (these are his words) "by continuing to as- 



SUFFRAGE CAMP REVISITED 55 

tonish man by all she does for his enchantment and 
delight, to serve him and to crown his life. . . ." 

Now, could even a man who for forty years has 
peered through a microscope, could he bring away 
from his studies in Natural History this comic- 
opera view of the uses and the value of one-half the 
species, unless Womankind had breathed upon the 
lens and fogged it? 

That we ourselves have borne false witness seems 
to be the chief indictment against us. The eminent 
gentleman I have quoted * is one of thousands who 
are ludicrously misled. Women are, to the gay Pro- 
fessor, simply flowers strewn along his gladsome way 
— or weeds in some obscure bj^-path. He is spared 
all realisation of the whirlwind of laughter that 
swept through at least one drawing-room wherein 
his scientific views were read aloud to an exultant 
company — each one vying with the other in con- 
juring up rapturous pictures of dancing-girls and 

i Sir k.c.b., rr.s., in the " Daily Telegraph," March 

3, 1908, ". . . fear that the great business of making the nest 
beautiful, producing and tending the young, nursing the sick, 
helping the aged, consoling the afflicted, rewarding the brave, 
of dancing and singing and creating gaiety within the charmed 
circle where political contests and affairs of State are of no 
account, would be neglected and without honour. In the end 
these amenities of life would probably fall into the hands of 
commercial companies and be sent out at so much a head — 
imported from Germany. Woman would not be the gainer, 
for she can only gain by continuing to astonish man by all she 
does for his enchantment and delight, to serve him and to 
crown his life — she will only suffer by becoming 'inde- 
pendent.' " 



56 WAY STATIONS 

fair women proudly devoting the flower of their 
days to performing enchantments for the " delight 
and astonishment " of the Professor of Biology. 
No echo of that laughter will reach him. Be sure 
he has found some woman who, in honest stupidity, 
or in cheerful mockery, will applaud, and in so far 
as she can, will realise for him his Mohammedan 
Heaven. 

But not only in private life have women borne 
false witness. Those who doubt this have only to 
look through the books written by women for the 
guidance of women — books, English, French, Ger- 
man, and American, published in the early or middle 
years of the last century. These works are more 
instructive to us to-day than they ever were to the 
poor souls for whom they were written. The books to 
which I especially refer were not cast in the frivolous 
form of fiction. They were offered as serious guides 
to life. Since they were, in point of fact, early 
contributions to the Woman Question, and since 
some of them enjoyed a wide popularity, they had 
their share in maintaining, if not in creating, the 
conditions we are face to face with to-day. These 
writings help us to understand our professor and 
many another man. 

Let us then, in the cause of enlightenment, con- 
sider for a few minutes one of the more successful 
of these publications — an excellent example to offer 
for your consideration, since it was written by an 
Englishwoman, and had a large circulation in Amer- 



SUFFRAGE CAMP REVISITED 57 

ica. How much harm it did over there I cannot 
say — but I am confident our professor's male pro- 
genitor recommended it warmly to his womankind. 

I came upon this priceless work in the form of an 
American reprint, which saw the light in 1843. 
" The Wives of England," as it is called (dedicated, 
by special permission, to Her Majesty the Queen), 
is written by Mrs. Ellis, author of " The Women of 
England " and of " The Daughters of England." 
Having dealt separately with the various aspects of 
her sex, Mrs. Ellis, it would seem, wound up by 
presenting woman collectively as " The Poetry of 
Life." That, at all events, is my interpretation 
of the title of the final work set to her credit. " The 
Poetry of Life " has not yet come my way. As a 
significant " et cetera " appears even after " The 
Poetry," we are left to grope in the void as to what 
more Mrs. Ellis found to say about her sex. Still, 
you will see, from the quoted array of works, that 
she was no raw hand ; and that in a day when it was 
not a commonplace for women to write books, our 
Mrs. Ellis had such encouragement that she perse- 
vered. You may read on the cover of an American 
reprint in a quotation from an admiring critic, that 
" ' The Wives of England ' is a work fitted to pro- 
mote the happiness of every family circle." If you 
read further you come to believe in the validity of 
that boast. 

In Chapter I, called "Thoughts before Mar- 
riage," Mrs. Ellis calls upon the weaker, and as she 



58 WAY STATIONS 

says, " consequently more easily deluded party, to 
pause and think again.' 5 If, she says, without a 
smile, you feel ashamed of the gentleman before 
marriage, " there is little probability that you will 
afterwards evince toward him that respect and rev- 
erence which is right and seemly in a wife. Al- 
though," she says, " I am one of the last persons 
who could wish to introduce in any plausible form, 
to an upright and honourable mind, the bare idea of 
the possibility of breaking an engagement; yet as 
there are cases," etc. etc. ..." I cannot help 
thinking," she goes on, " that, of two evils, it is in 
this case especially desirable to choose the least ; and 
to prefer inflicting a temporary pain, and " (mark 
this) " enduring an inevitable disgrace to being the 
means of destroying the happiness of a lifetime." 
She gives her advice with evident trepidation : " I 
am aware," she says, " that the opinion of the world 
and the general voice of society are against such 
conduct " (as a girl's daring to admit before it was 
too late, that she had come to realise she did not love 
the man), " and I am equally aware that no woman 
ought to venture upon breaking an engagement, on 
such grounds, without feeling herself humbled to the 
very dust. . . ." And so on. 

But, if to withdraw from an engagement is such 
dire disgrace what may be anticipated under the 
best conditions of love and prosperity, by going 
through with the business? "What are you ex- 
pecting? " Mrs. Ellis asks the trembling bride. " To 



SUFFRAGE CAMP REVISITED 59 

be always flattered? Depend upon it, t if your 
faults were never brought to light before, they will 
be so now. Are you expecting to be always in- 
dulged? Depend upon it, if your temper was never 
tried before it will be so now. Are you expecting 
to be always admired? Depend upon it, if you were 
never humble and insignificant before, you will have 
to be so now. Yes, you had better make up your 
mind at once to be uninteresting as long as you live, 
to all " (she clutches desperately at a fleeting hope) 
" except the companion of your home ; and well will 
it be," she says with recovered firmness, " well will it 
be for you if you can be interesting to him. You 
had better settle it in your calculations that you 
will have to be crossed oftener than the day; and 
the part of wisdom will dictate, that if you persist 
in your determination to be married you shall not 
only be satisfied, but cheerful to have these things 
so." She goes on to tell you that when a woman has 
brought down " every rebellious thought to sub- 
servience and " — I am still quoting Mrs. Ellis — 
" an earnest and prayerful determination entered 
into, to be but a secondary being in the great busi- 
ness of conducting the general affairs of social life " 
(even of social life, you observe), "there are a few 
things yet to be thought of before the final step," 
etc. 

One of these final things is Mrs. Ellis's warning to 
the girl never to breathe a word to her lover about 
the addresses of any other suitor. Let him think 



60 WAY STATIONS 

he is the only man she ever became really aware of, 
otherwise, Mrs. Ellis says, your confidences " will be 
remembered against you at some future time when," 
she adds in her cheerful way, "each day will be suf- 
ficiently darkened by its own passing clouds." The 
bride, she observes on page 12, is to note that it is of 
the utmost importance not to offend her husband's 
relatives by any appearance of contradiction or self- 
will. " He and his friends will be better judges than 
you can be," says Mrs. Ellis. The woman is called 
upon not only to regard herself as a novice, but " in 
taking upon herself the honourable title of wife, to 
sit in humility and self-abasement in the lowest seat." 
That is textual, though how the " honour " and the 
" lowest seat " are compatible in the Ellis mind, I 
will leave to you. 

" In being unobtrusive, quiet, impartially polite 
to all and willing to bend to circumstances, consists 
the great virtue of the bride; and though to sink 
into an apparent nonentity may be a little humbling 
to one who has perhaps occupied a distinguished 
place among her former friends, the prudent woman 
will be abundantly repaid." 

You have Mrs. Ellis's word for it. 

But will you believe me when I say that in Chap- 
ter III, on " The Characteristics of Men," before 
our author deals with "spots on the sun " (as she 
bids us to consider the shortcomings of men), she 
tells us that in the character of " the truly good man 
there is a power and a sublimity so nearly approach- 



SUFFRAGE CAMP REVISITED 61 

ing what we believe to be the nature and capacity of 
angels, no language can describe the degree of ad- 
miration and respect that the contemplation of such 
a character must excite. To be permitted," she goes 
on (and here we see the happiness of the family circle 
being actively promoted!), "to be permitted to 
dwell within the influence of such a man, must be 
a privilege of the highest order: to listen to his 
conversation must be a perpetual feast; but to be 
permitted into his heart, to share his counsels, and 
to be the chosen companion of his joys and sor- 
rows ! " — Mrs. Ellis is here breathless with ecstasy, 
and merely flings down a point of exclamation. But 
after adding a dash she winds up — " it is difficult 
to say whether humility or gratitude should pre- 
ponderate in the feelings of the woman thus dis- 
tinguished and thus blessed." 

Now, how are you to treat this paragon once you 
have secured him? "It is little use," says Mrs. 
Ellis, " that you esteem and reverence your husband 
in the secret of your heart, if you do not by your 
manners, both at home and abroad, evince the proper 
deference and regard. At home it is but fitting that 
the master of the house should be considered as en- 
titled to the choice of every personal indulgence, 
unless indisposition or suffering on the part of the 
wife render such indulgences more properly her due ; 
but even then they ought to be received as a favour, 
rather than claimed as a right." 

Much space is devoted to consideration of how a 



62 WAY STATIONS 

woman by the simple device of seldom saying any- 
thing at all, may keep the affections of her husband. 
It requires much tact, as well as delicacy, we are told, 
to know how to render even expressions of endear- 
ment appropriate and consequently acceptable. But 
Mrs. Ellis is reassured by remembering that " not 
the highest intellectual attainments " united to the 
noblest gifts of nature, " will be able to efface for a 
moment the delicate perceptions of a truly sensitive 
woman, or to render her in the deep and fervent love 
of which she is capable, otherwise than humble and 
easily subdued ; especially when she comes with child- 
like simplicity to consult the dial of her husband's 
love, and to read there the progress of the advancing 
or receding shadows, which indicate her only true 
position through the lapse of every hour." 

There is a wonderful passage, which I have not 
time to quote, about the occasional laying aside of 
his dignity, on the part of what Whistler used to call 
" the Bow- Wow British Husband." " For the wife," 
says Mrs. Ellis, " it might be a dangerous experi- 
ment, even in her fondest and most unguarded mo- 
ments, to make any allusion to scenes and circum- 
stances of this description: especially to presume 
upon having necessarily assumed, at such times, the 
stronger and more important part. When her hus- 
band chooses to be dignified again and is capable of 
maintaining that dignity, she must adapt herself to 
the happy change and fall back into comparative 
insignificance." 



SUFFRAGE CAMP REVISITED 68 

We could take leave of Mrs. Ellis and her like 
more gaily were it not for the attitude she seems to 
share in common with other of these old advisers 
on the subject of the unfaithful husband. " There 
is nothing," she says, " but uncomplaining loneliness 
and utter self-abasement for the wife who cannot 
keep her husband's heart. It is in this spirit alone 
that with any propriety, or any hope, she can appeal 
to a husband's feelings . . . casting herself upon 
his pity as one struck down by a beloved hand will 
kiss the instrument of her abasement. . . ." 

Is it not clear that this sort of attitude on the part 
of women who were influential accounts for much? 

Some of us who have not the excuse of speaking 
for the public of sixty years ago — some of us have 
upon our souls sins not so different, after all, from 
those of Mrs. Ellis. I am here not so much to bewail 
those sins as to inquire how shall we wipe them out? 

To register a vow never voluntarily to contribute 
more to ignoble notions of women — that is not 
enough. You, especially you Suffragists who are 
young, are not content with that, and you should 
not be. We have too much leeway to make up. 
The mere withholding of the Vote means too much 
of daily injustice to the industrial army; too much 
of constant danger to the economic safety and there- 
fore to the moral safety of all women. 

It is not enough to recognise these facts privately. 
It is not enough to admit them publicly without fear 
of criticism and without hope of applause. I say 



64 WAY STATIONS 

this not unmindful of the obstacles in many a 
would-be helper's way. My point is that our diffi- 
culties, more than anything else, should open our 
eyes — should educate us, and finally should nerve 
us to sweep those difficulties out of the world. 

Women of the type of the majority here to-night 
(women from whom so much is rightly expected) 
find themselves in a world where things — the big 
effectual things — are done by men. If a woman is 
to accomplish some piece of work " out in the world," 
as it is called — the achievement must usually come 
about by means of the grace of men. It is they 
who hold all the influential posts. They have nearly 
all the money. When it is a question even of money 
nominally belonging to a woman, she is often not 
free to use it as she thinks best. 

Hearing, just lately, of cases illustrating this last 
point, I have been reminded of the impression made 
upon me as a child by my mother's telling me of the 
trouble she had in persuading her trustee to allow 
her to manumit her slaves. She found herself in the 
same position in which certain of our friends find 
themselves to-day with regard to helping the Suffrage 
treasury. Their husbands, brothers, guardians, " do 
not see the necessity." The Kentucky trustee of 
long ago saw in slaves only property; and in his 
ward he saw only a romantic young woman whose 
foolishness must be kept down with a firm hand. 
But the romantic young woman saved enough out of 
her pin-money to buy the liberty of one of her slaves 



SUFFRAGE CAMP REVISITED 65 

each year. That, however, was not the part of the 
story that interested me any more than it will you. 
The significant part of it was the sum the slave- 
owner had to save up before she could set free a 
certain favourite negress. All concern in the trans- 
action was merged for me in sheer envy of that 
black woman who, in the open market, was worth 
such a lot of money. Should I ever be worth a thou- 
sand dollars to anybody? It was unthinkable. 

This is the sort of soul-searching that no little 
male-child in a comfortable home ever knows at its 
highest poignancy. The boy has no misgiving as 
to his value. The man has still less. It is not only 
that, through their superior opportunities, men are 
those who make the large fortunes — to speak of 
" value " of the most obvious kind. Where there 
are great sums to bequeath, with you in England, 
they go not to the daughter who is debarred from 
making large sums for herself. They go to the son, 
for whom all doors swing wide. 

The effect of the law of primogeniture is not 
merely to mass all the great fortunes in the hands 
of men. The principle set up by that law hypnotises 
even the people who have no estates and no far- 
descended titles to pass on. It coerces the imagina- 
tion of the million into fixing its hopes, and spending 
such money as it can scrape together, on the son. 
He may be an idler. It doesn't matter. He may be 
semi-idiotic. It is all one. The daughter may, with 
scant encouragement, arrive at what excellence you 



66 WAY STATIONS 

will — as long as there are any sons about — or even 
nephews or cousins, the lion's share, as the saying 
presages, will go to the male. 

If the woman insists on practising some art or 
profession, if, against all odds, she achieves distinc- 
tion — - no official honour for her. Not one of the 
great worldly prizes will ever come her way. 2 Not 
through character, not through gifts, not through 
service — only through the gate of Wifehood is any 
woman allowed to come to honour. 

With regard to those glittering baubles — bar- 
onies, peerages, laureateships, and the like (which I 
am credibly informed men eagerly compete for) — 
Woman's position reminds me of a fire that took place 
in Atlantic City, while I was over on the other side. 
A little boy and girl coming home from school found 
their house in flames. The two children and a girl- 
neighbour, all under eight years of age, went 
" pluckily," as the dispatch records, into the burning 
house " to bring out the two-year-old Blanche, who 
was asleep in her go-cart in the kitchen." Neigh- 
bours came, as the children dragged the scorched 
go-cart with its burden out of the room, which was 
already on fire. " Sammy is going to be a fireman 
when he grows up," said his sister, " so Mary and 
me went in to help him get the baby out. . . ." 

It is an old story for woman to " go through fire " 

2 1 am glad to be reminded there is an exception to this 
rule. In the short space of time during which one great In- 
ternational honour has been open to both sexes, twice the 
Nobel Prize has been won by women. 



SUFFRAGE CAMP REVISITED 67 

with the man. She may bring out the baby, but it 
is the man who brings out the medal. 

With regard to the opportunity of service given 
by money, I am not forgetting that, hampered as 
women are, they are said to keep the great charities 
alive. It is largely a case of many a little making a 
mickle. It is also true that some of you are almon- 
ers, and have the handling of large sums which your 
husbands place at your disposal. But, suggest to 
these gentlemen that instead of giving to charities 
for the next year, you will give to the Suffrage Move- 
ment? — and see how free you are to choose what 
Cause you will help! Your restricted liberty, even 
here, is one of the reasons that some women (agree- 
ing with us in their hearts) make no sign. They 
wear all the marks of wealth, but they have nothing 
really their own. 

One of my most curious experiences, since my 
return from the other side of the world, has been 
to see some old acquaintance at one of the Suffrage 
meetings, and to say with an impulse of pleasure: 
" Oh ! I never thought I should find you here ! " 
" Why not ? " my interlocutor has answered, a little 
injured; " I was a Suffragist long before you were." 
I could only murmur that I had never suspected it, 
and wonder in my heart if anybody else ever had ! 

But even in the case of women openly with us and 
of independent means, a common excuse for not 
doing something for the Cause is that same honour- 
able-sounding one of " Charities." I am reminded 



68 WAY STATIONS 

in this connection of an American working-girl who 
was sent to ask a certain rich woman, of well-known 
liberality, to help the funds of a Trade Union to 
which the girl belonged. The lady offered no ob- 
jection to the principle of Trade Unionism, and she 
listened to the story of the work this particular body 
was doing, kindly enough — but to all appeals for 
help returned the one answer, that she " had her 
charities" — her Working-Girls' Clubs, her Friendly 
and Rescue Societies, and the rest — till at last the 
girl, heart-sick at her failure, burst out with: 
" Don't you see what we are trying to do is to get 
rid of the need of your charity ? " " But no ! " the 
working-girl said, in telling about the interview, 
" there's lots like her. They've got the charity- 
habit. It is the stuff that sends 9 em to sleep! " 

Now there is another sort of " stuff " that sends 
women to sleep. Remembering it brings me to the 
remaining reason which I suggest as one of the three 
that bar our more rapid progress. The other nar- 
cotic is provided by the illusion entertained about 
the lady whom the world labels " Exceptional." 

She is sometimes tolerably well-informed. She, 
unlike the mass of her sex, often has independent 
means. She usually can make people listen to her. 
Why has she not done more to further this reform? 
For nobody pretends that it was left for our own age 
to produce, now and then, a woman who could think 
straight and speak Without fear. Long before most 
of us here were born, a worn&n-friend of Emerson 



SUFFRAGE CAMP REVISITED 69 

and member of the Brook Farm group, was writing 
against " the habit of talking about woman's Sphere, 
as if it really were at present, for the majority, one 
of protection and the gentle offices of home. The 
rhetorical gentlemen and silken dames who, quite 
forgetting their washerwomen, their seamstresses, 
and the poor hirelings for the sensual pleasure of 
Man, that jostle them daily in the streets — talk as 
if woman need be fitted for no other chance than that 
of growing like cherished flowers in the garden of 
domestic love." 

Even earlier, your Mrs. Jamieson was writing 
about what she calls " the anomalous condition of 
woman," pointing out " as a primary source of in- 
calculable mischief the contradiction between woman's 
supposed and her real position; between what is 
called her proper sphere and what has become her 
real sphere by the laws of necessity." 

Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, what came of all this 
brave nineteenth-century talk that has to our ears 
such a twentieth-century ring? Why didn't these 
women accomplish more? Why have they left so 
much for you to do? I will remind you why; for 
our most significant lesson lies in the answer to that 
question. 

In the days when these women thought and wrote, 
the secret of combination was not known. These 
excellent people failed to further the Cause they 
advocated, because they tried to do alone what can 
only be accomplished if we work together. 



70 WAY STATIONS 

Hitherto, public opinion has been man's opinion. 
It has consistently begged the question of the fitness 
of women in general to advise in public affairs. And 
it has done this by dint of labelling " exceptional " 
those women whose capacity could not be denied. 

As I have said, the worst of it was that woman 
herself was induced to accept that summing up of 
the matter. The flattery implied in the assurance 
that she was unique, clouded her judgment of the 
rest of her sex. It checked her generosity. It 
turned to a barren self-conceit what would have been 
fertile seed if cast upon thr common fields. 

I have come to the conclusion that the reason the 
Exceptional Woman is one of our chief obstacles is 
because she is a Drug in the Market! I can scarcely 
find one of my sex whom someone has not been 
ready to persuade of her Exceptionalness ! 

A year or so ago I was present during a conversa- 
tion between a lady and a gentleman, in which, by 
way of good-humouredly belabouring me, some 
laughing reference was made to Woman Suffrage. 
The lady promptly disavowed all sympathy with that 
Cause, but justified her own conspicuous activities 
by admitting there were certain public duties which 
men could not adequately perform without women's 
aid. She instanced the supervision of the great hos- 
pitals. She told how, years ago, being appointed 
among the officers of one of your large institutions, 
she asked for an explanation of a certain consider- 
able item of expense. Nobody could furnish any 



SUFFRAGE CAMP REVISITED 71 

details, and her brethren on the Board were not in- 
clined to go into the matter. That item had always 
been there. No one had ever questioned it before. 
But the newcomer on the Board was not abashed. 
Upon persisting in her search for knowledge, she 
was referred from one authority to another till 
finally she confronted the Matron. The Matron 
was haughty, and said the sum had gone in " the 
usual necessaries." She had, of course, kept an 
account of them? "Oh, of course." Then would 
the Matron produce her account? "No. 55 It was 
something that no man in nineteen years had ven- 
tured to ask of her. 

In less than nineteen days a dishonest Matron was 
removed, and serious leakage of public money was 
stopped. 

The gentleman who listened to this recital gave it 
as his opinion that there were few women who could 
keep their own accounts, let alone detect misappro- 
priation of Public Funds. But, he added, \vith 
his most gracious smile, it was no news to him that 
the lady who had succeeded in doing this was an 
Exceptional Woman. " You must not think, 5 ' he 
admonished her, " that many women are as able as 
you. 55 

As I have said, the phrase is one which every 
woman can hear at some time from somebody — but 
in the pleased complacence with which the great lady 
in question accepted the narrowing down of a prin- 
ciple into an assertion of her own superiority, I 



72 WAY STATIONS 

seemed to see why she did not believe in Woman Suf- 
frage. To be able to believe in the value of the 
Suffrage you must be able to believe in other people. 
You must neither think too much of yourself, nor 
too meanly of the rest of the world. 

Whether it be our New England Margaret Fuller 
" declining " (in the words of her brother and biog- 
rapher) " to join any organised body "; " refusing," 
as he says elsewhere, " to merge her individuality " ; 
or whether it be that great spirit, George Eliot, or 
Lady Mary Wortley Montague, preaching subservi- 
ence to others and herself practising the largest 
liberty — each one fancied herself not in her gift 
alone, but in her fundamental needs, to be an Ex- 
ceptional Woman. The love of liberty which these 
notable ladies shared in common, their passionate 
insistence upon it for themselves, each took for the 
head and front of her Execeptionalness. They 
seemed to think with Lady Mary Wortley Montague, 
that so far man was right. Liberty probably 
would be bad for other women. To " the Excep- 
tional " it was so dear, so indispensable, they would 
pay any price society exacted even for the maimed 
and doubtful makeshift that they won. 

What I want to emphasise is that because these 
brilliant women insisted on Freedom only for them- 
selves, they lost it even for themselves. For liberty 
seems to be a plant that needs the air. It will not 
grow in confinement. It really looks as though you 



SUFFRAGE CAMP REVISITED 73 

could not keep Freedom alive unless it is free. — -to 
everybody. 

Those who were " great ladies " by the accident 
of birth, or the chance of marriage ; those who were 
successful artists, able to command a hearing — 
practically all who had some measure of liberty, 
seem to have lived in the fog of this old illusion. 

They were " Exceptions," not merely in oppor- 
tunity or in gifts, but in the essentials which lie be- 
hind these things. 

Yet in any project of reform, the most richly 
endowed woman in the world can count for little 
more, outside her own door, than a voice crying in 
the wilderness, unless the charge of her " Excep- 
tionalness " is proved unfounded through the re- 
sponse she wins from others like-minded with herself. 
Like-minded, as aforesaid, in essentials. 

Happily, women are learning, at last, what men 
had to learn before they could achieve their freedom 
— the fact that surface differences in one's fellows 
do not necessarily make for disaccord. 

It is one of the by-products of the new processes 
of thought that women are less disposed in these 
days to over-estimate their individual value. 

Speaking only of the province of Art and Letters, 
wherein women have longest been able to compete — 
if no single fame emerges to-day as notable as that 
of certain figures towering out of the past, intelligent 
women know that the sum of feminine achievement 



74 WAY STATIONS 

is for the first time a factor in that Welt politiJc 
which is the shaping of public opinion. 

We see clearly that, working shoulder to shoulder 
as we have never worked before, women are laying 
the foundations of a power which is to change the 
course of history. 

TIME TABLE 

March — June, 1908 

Upon the retirement of Sir Henry Campbell-Banner- 
man, and the accession to leadership of Mr. Asquith, the 
Women's Cause lost a weak friend and gained a deter- 
mined enemy. 

The next outstanding event after the change in Pre- 
miership was the campaign of a prospective Cabinet 
Minister, Mr. Winston Churchill, seeking re-election for 
Northwest Manchester. His indeterminate attitude on 
the woman question brought against him the full weight 
of the W.S.P.U. electioneering organisation. Remark- 
able as it was even at that date, many persons, then as 
later, were ready to assign any and every reason for a 
Liberal candidate's defeat except the reason frequently 
contributory, sometimes decisive. Mr. Churchill's suc- 
cessful opponent, Mr. Joynson-Hicks, in publicly thank- 
ing his electors, said : " I acknowledge the assistance I 
have received from those ladies sometimes laughed at, 
but who, I think, will in future be feared by Mr. Church- 
ill—the Suffragists." 

A " safe " seat was, of course, ultimately found for 
the Government nominee, but this second by-election, for 
the purpose of enabling Mr. Churchill to join the Cab- 



SUFFRAGE CAMP REVISITED 75 

inet, presented his women opponents with an excellent 
opportunity for conducting an educational campaign in 
a new field. 

Whether instructed by the events in Northwest Man- 
chester, Mr. Churchill was prepared to be a little more 
precise and encouraging in his pronouncements at Dun- 
dee. The Suffragettes were " hornets/' but, all the 
same, " No one/' he declared, " can be blind to the fact 
that, at the next General Election, Woman Suffrage will 
be a real practical issue; and the next Parliament, I 
think, ought to see the gratification of the women's 
claims." 

But all efforts failed to draw from Mr. Churchill some 
definite undertaking to forward the Cause, whose justice 
he now admitted. 

Mr. Asquith had refused to " give time " for Mr. 
Stanger's Bill. But owing, some thought, to the action 
of a body of dissatisfied Liberal women, he said later 
(speaking of the need to abolish Plural Voting, and 
other electoral anomalies) that, though he would not 
give Woman Suffrage a place in the contemplated Re- 
form Bill, he would not oppose a woman's amendment, 
if framed on democratic lines; if accorded the strong 
and undoubted support of the women of the country as 
well as of the electorate; and if such amendment were 
approved by the House of Commons. Thus the Prime 
Minister put up barrier after barrier — demanding pros- 
pectively of women of all political creeds that their shar- 
ing in the elementary right of civilised citizenship should 
advantage one party — Mr. Asquith's own. He, more- 
over, demanded proof that, in spite of that fundamen- 
tally unfair proviso, all the country should care so much 
more about women's having that elementary right than 



76 WAY STATIONS 

about any party advantage, that the country as a whole 
(unlike the Prime Minister) would agree with one voice 
that women should accept these one-sided terms rather 
than wait for any that might be fairer. 

Even supposing this miracle of public unanimity could 
be wrought, Mr. Asquith still had countless ways of 
quietly influencing the Cabinet-ridden Commons. No 
one could know better than the Prime Minister what were 
the obstacles in the way of a concentration of forces 
in favour of a far-reaching reform known to be repug- 
nant to the head of the party in power. 

But those were days when women knew less about 
" the wheels within wheels " of politics. The Liberal 
women and the Constitutional Suifragists of all parties 
imagined that Mr. Asquith had made a valuable conces- 
sion. 

Even the militants took up that part of the challenge 
which by implication denied the general and " demo- 
cratic " character of the demand. They knew that at the 
time of the agitation on- the part of politicians to extend 
the vote to the agricultural labourer, opponents of that 
proposed extension said with truth what no one could 
say of the women's agitation: that there was no demand 
amongst the section to be franchised. The answer of 
the great Liberals of the past had been that the fact of 
the agricultural labourers not demanding the vote was a 
proof the more of their need to exercise it and so to 
learn its value. 

But to the " weaker sex " the heavier task. 

It was gallantly undertaken. 

On June 21st an impressive historical and symbolical 
pageant, organised by the National Union of Suffrage 
Societies, marched through crowded, cheering streets 



SUFFRAGE CAMP REVISITED 77 

from the Embankment to the Albert Hall. Under the 
chairmanship of the President, Mrs. Fawcett, a mass 
meeting was held of such size and enthusiasm as men of 
long political experience declared had seldom been 
equalled. 

A week later came the monster demonstration in Hyde 
Park, under the auspices of the Women's Social and Po- 
litical Union. 

"The Times" said of it: 

" Its organisers had counted on an audience of 250,000. 
That expectation was certainly fulfilled, and probably it was 
doubled, and it would be difficult to contradict anyone who 
asserted that it was trebled. Like the distances and number 
of the stars, the facts were beyond the threshold of percep- 
tion." 

The " Standard" said: 

"From first to last, it was a great meeting, daringly con- 
ceived, splendidly stage-managed, and successfully carried out. 
Hyde Park has probably never seen a greater crowd of 
people." 

The "Daily News" said: 

"There is no combination of words which will convey an 
adequate idea of the immensity of the crowd around the plat- 
forms." 

The "Daily Express": 

"The Women Suffragists provided London yesterday with 
one of the most wonderful and astonishing sights that have ever 
been seen since the days of Boadicea. ... It is probable that 
so many people never before stood in one square mass any- 
where in England. Men who saw the great Gladstone meeting 
years ago said that compared with yesterday's multitude, it 
was as nothing." 



78 WAY STATIONS 

The "Daily Chronicle " said: 

" Never, on the admission of the most experienced observers, 
has so vast a throng gathered in London to witness an outlay 
of political force." 



THE MEANING OF IT* 

Many an ardent Suffragist could have found in her 
heart to-day the wish that the populace of London 
had chosen to take a more temperate interest in " the 
Cause." 

The moment of entering the Park was a thing 
to remember. Thousands of banners were shining 
in the sunlight of a perfect afternoon, and punctu- 
ating in pennons of green and violet the lines of 
the seven armies, entering each by a different gate, 
to the music of thirty bands. 

Good-humoured as the vast crowd showed itself, 
those who could escape from it were envied, even 
though escape meant mounting by strange and exig- 
uous steps that somewhat dizzy elevation which 
served as a Conning Tower. 

From this highest point of vantage in the Park 
one looked abroad and caught the breath. People! 
People ! People ! as far as the leaf-fringed bounda- 
ries of the Park. Men climbed up to stand an in- 
stant beside us, to stare abroad and to estimate the 
number of people in the Park at a quarter of a 
million, or fifty thousand in excess of that number. 

* An impression of the great Hyde Park Demonstration, 
published in the Daily Mail, June 23,-1908. 

79 



80 WAY STATIONS 

For the most part these transient visitors would 
gape with wonder, murmuring there had never been 
so many people gathered together before in any 
peaceful demonstration, since history began, and 
then still staring give way to others and drop back 
into that sea of folk below. 

The noise was momentarily hushed when the bugles 
gave the signal for the speaking to begin. The 
megaphones roared " Now ! " — upon which in twenty 
places a woman's figure rose up above the sea of 
heads and began to address the people. 

I left the Conning Tower and made my way 
from one to another of the platforms, forging a 
path through the tight-packed mass with infinite 
difficulty, and not without invoking the aid now of 
a beneficent policeman, now of some friendly 
stranger. 

According to the plan, when the bugles sounded 
a second time, the speaking was brought to a close, 
and at a final signal the great concerted cry went 
up : " Votes for Women ! 5? 

Caps went up, too, and the air was full of the 
fluttering of handkerchiefs and the noise of thou- 
sands of voices shouting. The sound is in my ears 
still, but, strangely enough, with no human accent. 
The Conning Tower was like some wave-beaten rock, 
and the roar that rose from its base was like the 
sound the sea makes rushing at full tide into rever- 
berating caverns. 

It has been a day of sunshine, of thunderous cheer- 



THE MEANING OF IT 81 

ing, of music, of colour, and of immense good-will. 
But what has it done for the women's cause? 

Tens of thousands all over the country will be 
asking to-morrow: What has been achieved by the 
greatest demonstration of this nature ever made? 

When the total expenditure has been added up — 
all the physical and moral energy that went into 
those two monster Suffrage Demonstrations of the 
past week — not a woman who took part in them 
but w r ill ask: What does it all come to? 

If it " comes to " realisation on the part of the 
Powers that Be that women's demand for the vote 
is widespread enough and earnest enough to merit 
their getting it, then the labour will not have been 
in vain. 

But if it does not do just that, then the labour 
will have been in vain. 

What men may not generally realise is that many 
of the women who appeared in this demonstration, 
and in that of last week, did so only at the call of 
the highest sentiment of loyalty. There were those 
who marched in spite of thinking a parade through 
the streets a childish way of having to record opin- 
ion — there were those who carried banners feeling 
in every nerve repugnance to the publicity they 
courted. 

Nothing but a passionate caring for the issue 
could have brought these women into line. Small 
consolation to them (and hardly more to the lighter- 
hearted Suffragists) that tens of thousands of peo- 



82 WAY STATIONS 

pie have cheered themselves hoarse in the Park, and 
that the greatest city in the world has twice within 
eight days been treated to a stirring, an unprece- 
dented spectacle. 

What does it all come to? 

TIME TABLE 

June — September, 1908 

Processions, Mass meetings, and vast open-air demon- 
strations, the labour of an army of people given gratis 
for the Cause during the many weeks of preparation; 
" Resolutions " in favour of Woman Suffrage carried by 
thousands wherever proposed, had no more effect upon 
a Liberal Government demanding signs of " democratic 
support " than had the deputation of textile-workers, or 
other labouring women, asking for the safeguard of the 
vote. 

But Mr. Asquith had laid such emphasis on the demo- 
cratic note — that it was sounded yet again. After an- 
other rallying of the W.S.P.U. forces at Caxton Hall, 
and, after a deputation was again sent out, and again 
repulsed, at the Strangers' Entrance to the House of 
Commons, a Mass Meeting was called in Parliament 
Square. According to the estimate of the press 100,000 
people responded. The Government sent 5,000 police 
to cope with this " democratic " gathering, and to pre- 
vent any of these inconveniently democratic women from 
either reaching the People's House, or from addressing 
the democracy about its doors. 

Education of the people being what it is, there was 
inevitably amongst so great a throng a number of roughs 



THE MEANING OF IT 83 

ready to take from the police the cue that women who 
publicly demanded the vote were outlaws and fair game. 
Who can wonder that some of the neglected and the vi- 
cious, seeing the very guardians of law and order harry- 
ing the women, should have construed this as permission 
to do the same, or worse. There were wild scenes that 
night in Parliament Square — watched by three Cabinet 
Ministers and other well-known public men standing in 
Palace Yard safe out of the melee. 

The women kept up the struggle till close on mid- 
night. Those Suffragists who were arrested were given 
from one to three months' imprisonment. 

While a number of these women were still in Holloway 
came three fresh by-elections. 

An emergency call went out from the W.S.P.U. head- 
quarters for more speakers. I happened to be staying 
in a country-house in the North of England at the time 
of the opening of the Newcastle contest. There was the 
usual house-party argument and the usual condemnation 
of militant tactics. One of the guests handed me a 
paper folded to display some " scare head/' which I do 
not now remember, but which conveyed the idea: 
" How Newcastle disposes of the wild women/ 9 

The article described an attack made on members of 
the Women's Social and Political Union who had dared 
to hold a meeting in a rough quarter of Newcastle near 
the docks. It was bad reading. I wondered how much 
of it was true. I wondered so much that the following 
morning I went to find out. On my arrival at Newcastle 
I discovered that, as usual, the scene had been exag- 
gerated, partly, I suppose, through the desire to make a 
good, blood-curdling story that should sell the paper, and 
partly from that motive we have become accustomed to 



84 WAY STATIONS 

see at work — a desire to frighten off other women from 
going near the places and the persons associated with 
these hideous scenes. 

Nevertheless j I heard Mrs. Pankhurst, soon after my 
arrival, telling a young helper that she was not to take 
the Dock Meeting that night (as the girl was expecting 
to do) but was to go with another detachment and speak 
in a different and, as I gathered, less disorderly quarter 
of the town. Mrs. Pankhurst herself took over the meet- 
ing at the danger-point — the scene of the disturbance 
I had read about. 

I would not for a great deal have missed the enlight- 
enment of that evening. Instead of listening to drawing- 
room misrepresentation of the Suffrage scenes, I found 
myself standing with Mrs. Pankhurst and her helpers 
on a lorry x while one after another those indomitable 
women addressed the crowd that surged about us. If 
she were not herself speaking Mrs. Pankhurst would in- 
terrupt whenever the situation was most threatening. I 
shall be very old before I can forget the slight figure 
on the cart confronting the turbulent mass in that ill-lit, 
unsavoury place, the face ghostly in the dimness, but 
the incomparable voice ringing out clear over the thou- 
sand heads, trying to rouse in that host of the neglected 
and unfit (who yet were in many cases voters) a sense 
of decency, of justice, of civic responsibility. 

I can feel now after four years the sense of the hope- 
lessness of her task, as I heard the cries about us, smelt 
the stench of rotten eggs and, as the speaker turned in 
the gloom to answer some verbal attack, I hear the sick- 
ening splash of something moist and foul as it struck 

i A dray. 



THE MEANING OF IT 85 

the white face lifted above that moral darkness. The 
quiet gesture with which she wiped the stain away and 
let her pocket-handkerchief fall, not resenting, hardly 
seeming to notice the insult, never stopping an instant in 
her attempt to enlighten these people, appealing still to 
whatever of good their poor share in civilisation had left 
alive. 

And then I saw the miracle happen. Someone had 
cried " shame ! " and moment by moment the temper of 
the crowd changed. The meeting ended in the throng's 
pressing closer round the lorry, not to overturn it, not 
now to attack the little group of women. Those who 
pressed nearer with outstretched hands held up pennies. 
" Paper, Miss — got a paper ? " We sold them all the 
copies we had brought. 

I have more to tell in a later paper of Suffragette 
dealings with that working-class " democracy " for 
which the Prime Minister has so great a regard. But 
the so-called " educated " were not neglected. Many 
women of the middle and upper class were still afraid to 
brave the widely advertised dangers of street gather- 
ings. For them a meeting was arranged at the Town 
Hall. 



VI 

AT NEWCASTLE TOWN HALL* 

Mrs. Taylor and Fellow-Women: 

I have been thinking that probably no reform has 
ever been advocated by so many good, and admit- 
tedly unanswerable arguments, as this of Woman*s 
Suffrage. You may, if you like, hear it urged with 
logic, and with eloquence, in six or seven different 
parts of this city, any day from now till the election 
is decided. 

You have heard, and will presently hear, more 
of these arguments presented afresh from this plat- 
form. Anyone who cannot go to meetings may 
have access to a large body of literature on the sub- 
ject, from Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart 
Mill down to Mrs. Pankhui:st's latest pamphlet. 

Because of the wealth of material of this nature 
constantly accessible to you, I will confine my re- 
marks to two other aspects of this many-sided mat- 
ter. One of them I will present by way of encour- 
agement to those who share our faith. The other 
I submit to those who have not yet joined us. 

Let us imagine that some one of you has come 
here to-day with a prejudice against this movement. 
If there is such a person present I am ready to ap- 

* Speech delivered Sept., 1908. 

86 



AT NEWCASTLE TOWN HALL 87 

plaud her for taking a step in the right direction. 
She could not do a better thing than listen to the 
speeches which will follow. But listening is not all. 
The mental attitude counts for much. Since I am 
hoping that anyone who arrived here unconvinced 
will go out of this hall a believer in, and a worker 
for, the franchise, I would offer this fact as a help 
to her conversion: almost every social or political 
betterment that we rejoice in to-day was opposed, 
and bitterly opposed, by the timid or the slavish 
in the days gone by. I will not remind you of the 
more notorious instances. They will be in the rec- 
ollection of everyone who knows anything about the 
past — though I do sometimes think that those per- 
sons who are so filled with apprehension at the pros- 
pect of the triumph of this reform, must either 
never have read, or must have forgotten all they 
ever knew about History. What I want to empha- 
sise is that there is almost no gain but has seemed 
loss to the majority, before it was accepted. Once 
accepted, nobody remembers long that anyone was 
ever so benighted as to oppose the thing proved 
good. 

Take, for instance, two institutions which are 
commonplaces of your civilisation. The first has 
to do with the financial credit of England at home 
and abroad. We all admit that in the present 
state of human society anything that affects pub- 
lic confidence in the fiscal soundness of the country 
is of importance. But we find a difficulty in put- 



88 WAY STATIONS 

ting ourselves in the place of those who opposed 
the founding of the Bank of England. Imagine 
regarding the Bank of England as a " shady con- 
cern " — the device of faddists and crack-brained 
believers in the Newfangled! But even the Bank of 
England did not escape being ranked with the " dan- 
gerous new things " — things that should not be tol- 
erated. Why should this pillar of English finance 
have been so distrusted, so hotly assaulted? Because 
previous to 1694 the people of this country had done 
without it. 

I will give you one more significant example of 
the fear of the new thing because it is new. 

Those of us who think of the civilisation of the 
English-speaking race as old — find something in- 
congruous in the reminder that so short a time as a 
hundred and ten years ago a law was passed mak- 
ing the circulating library illegal. In these days 
the man who puts books within easy reach of the 
people is called a benefactor. A little over a hun- 
dred years ago he not only would not have been con- 
sidered a benefactor, he would have been disgraced 
and heavily fined. I say disgraced advisedly. Any 
person who in the year 1799 made a practice of lend- 
ing or hiring out newspapers or pamphlets or books, 
was legally held to be on a par with the keeper of 
a disorderly house. 

Surely a fact like this ought to give pause to 
those who are afraid to open the door of the mind 
to a new blessing merely because it is new f 



AT NEWCASTLE TOWN HALL 89 

Now to those who are ready to welcome Women's 
Enfranchisement I will say a few last words before 
I sit down. 

An ever-growing number of people have begun 
to see clearly that there never was before, in all 
the course of history, such a chance for the wisdom 
of our half the world to manifest itself as is given 
to women to-day. Join in this movement, give it 
your special gift, whatever that gift may be — give 
it your time and your influence (everybody has 
some), give it pounds or give it pennies, or give it 
defence — do your share with the sure knowledge 
that you are not only doing, but receiving, good. 

The situation is enormously interesting. Before 
the coming of these wonderful days women had to 
do their work (even the most gifted and the bravest 
women) — had to work, not only heavily handi- 
capped, but without any hope of making the battle 
a whit easier for others. A woman might — if she 
had great abilities and great luck — she might make 
an individual success. But she did so with the dis- 
heartening knowledge that her most shining achieve- 
ment left the great mass of women and therefore 
of men — left the world — very little better off, in 
spite of all her individual striving — in spite of 
all her individual success. What she achieved did 
not really count in the long run. By so much as 
she distinguished herself she was thought of as an 
exception, a " sport," as the men of science say. 
But the women who are working for high ends to- 



90 WAY STATIONS 

day — - whether in Finland in the Parliament, whether 
in Germany in the Universities, whether in the 
streets of Constantinople, in the Woman's Trade 
Unions of America, or at the English by-elections, 
— women to-day may work gladly and with up- 
lifted hearts. For they find themselves (especially 
I say this to the younger women), you find your- 
selves in the field at a great moment in the world's 
history. Your good fortune it is to be offered a 
glorious piece of work at a time when what you do 
is going to count. 

Whether you have read history or whether you 
have read only the newspapers, you must have come 
to see that the times are ripe for a new and a nobler 
standard of the value of woman's work. I do not 
really need to say that this applies as much to the 
woman whose chief work is minding her home and 
bringing up her children, bringing them up to be> 
lieve in the equal dignity of the sexes. It applies to 
her just as much as it applies to those who are em- 
ployed in more public service. 

Before to-day, if a woman succeeded even in pri- 
vate life in shaping her existence to high and noble 
ends, she could never be sure that the germs of 
self-respect and independence she might implant 
in her daughter would survive the hard and bitter 
conditions which there was always the possibility 
the daughter would encounter when she should 
leave her mother's side. But remember that we have 
with us, now, a power greater than that of all the 



AT NEWCASTLE TOWN HALL 91 

Cabinet put together — greater than all the Gov- 
ernments of all the nations of the earth. We have 
the Tendency of the Time on our side. It's a very 
tremendous thing, this Tendency of the Time. The 
individual, even the strongest, may be a straw in 
the current. But we fortunate ones find ourselves 
living in the days when the stream of tendency is at 
last turning our way. We have the sure and com- 
fortable knowledge that what the Suffragist preaches 
to-day will very presently be accepted by the whole 
world. 

I cannot myself imagine anything more glorious 
in the way of human destiny than to be a woman 
living in these times — a woman able to take active 
part in this great work. There will always be plenty 
for women to do — but never again, one may think, 
will the lot fall to woman of seeing herself so 
needed. 

A very moving thought is this one of the high 
significance of women's actions and women's words 
in these months that lie before us. Stop a moment 
to realise the situation. Women who have so long 
been called weak and helpless, who have so often 
been weak and helpless, they need be that no longer 
— unless they are so downtrodden and so spiritless 
that they prefer being weak and helpless to being 
strong and being of value. 

Until the New Suffrage Movement made such a 
statement possible and true, never before could any- 
one with a sense of responsibility stand up and say 



92 WAY STATIONS 

to an audience of all sorts and conditions: There 
isn't a woman here who may not have her share in 
the honour of counting for something in the poli- 
tics of her country. The fact that anyone may 
say that to you to-day is (to my thinking) a thing 
that will stand to the eternal credit of the Founders 
of this Union, They have discovered ways — with 
a genius and a fertility beyond praise — they have 
discovered ways in which every woman may share in 
the honour of bringing about the most momentous 
reform that the world has seen. 

TIME TABLE 

September, 1908 — March, 1909 

In anticipation of the opening of Parliament on Oc- 
tober 12th, 1908, an effort was again made to induce the 
Prime Minister to promise " facilities " for enabling the 
House of Commons to proceed with the Women's Bill. 

The Prime Minister refused to give any such promise. 

For the fifth time a so-called " Parliament of 
Women " was announced to meet at Caxton Hall. The 
business was to be the framing of a Resolution which a 
volunteer deputation was to take to the Prime Minister 
— or as near to him as he would allow. Everyone knew 
by now that a Suffrage Deputation (having the avowed 
design of bringing home to the Government a sense of 
the urgency of the matter that was being neglected) 
would find its progress opposed by the police. Every- 
one knew that after much ill-treatment the more deter- 
mined members of the deputation would be arrested. 
But though the deputation might fail to bring their Res- 



AT NEWCASTLE TOWN HALL 93 

olution before the Prime Minister, they would have 
brought it before the general public. They would have 
compelled the attention of the authorities, if only by mak- 
ing them advertise and emphasise the growing discon- 
tent, through their employment of thousands of police to 
keep women away from a House of Commons which did 
not represent them. 

Upon one point in the contest the Prime Minister had 
expressed a reasonable view. The question of Woman 
Suffrage, according to him, was one which concerned the 
great body of the public. He has the women with him 
there. Furthermore, they had seen his Cabinet refusing 
to treat the matter seriously. They had seen a supine 
Commons entangled in red tape. Since, therefore, no 
individual and no official group both could and would at- 
tend to a matter vitally concerning the public, there was 
no choice between letting the issue drop or letting the 
public lend a hand in dealing with it. The public was 
invited to lend a hand. 

A leaflet, sown broadcast, invited the people of Lon- 
don to come to Westminster and help the Suffragettes to 
" rush the House of Commons." 

As a result of the issuance of this highly " demo- 
cratic " invitation for the evening of October 13th, a 
summons, on October 12th, was served upon Mrs. Pank- 
hurst, Mrs. Drummond, and Miss Christabel Pankhurst, 
" in consideration of conduct likely to provoke a breach 
of the peace." 

A few days before, a Labour Member of Parliament, 
at a mass meeting of unemployed men, publicly advised 
them to " rush " the bakers' shops and to help themselves. 
At a moment of industrial wretchedness and unrest, men 
(who have better ways of ventilating grievances and se- 



94 WAY STATIONS 

curing special legislation) were instigated by one who 
was not only a voter but a legislator, to loot the premises 
of tradespeople, and to foment riots in an effort to stir 
the sluggishness of authority. Yet to do this was held 
to be less reprehensible than to invite the people to rush 
to the People's House (where all these matters are de- 
bated and decided) on an errand which, although su- 
premely urgent, Parliament had toyed with for forty 
years. Or, by a more ironic construction put upon the 
invitation, the public was asked to help the Suffrag- 
ettes to rush (i.e. to induce something like speed in) 
that cumbrous body which had yielded to the lethargy of 
party thraldom. Just as to " rush " the baker shops 
meant an attempt to secure quickly a needed share of the 
staple of baker shops — bread (for lack of which a little 
group of people were suffering), so, to rush the House 
of Commons plainly meant an attempt to secure quickly 
a still more needed share of those staples of Parliament, 
Representation and Special Legislation, for lack of 
which millions of people had suffered too long, too 
patiently. 

The poor little baker shops would have been defence- 
less against the onslaught of hunger-maddened men. 
The House which the hand-bill invited the people to 
" rush " was known to be guarded as if for a siege. 

A throng of unarmed citizens (even had they desired, 
and they did not so desire) could do no possible harm to 
the august body sitting in the Commons. But the man 
in the street, and the woman, could by their presence 
within Parliamentary precincts, and by their temper, give 
a sign of their interest in the Women's Cause. What 
other Cause, by a simple hand-bill, however framed, could 
have filled Parliament Square with so many thousands? 



AT NEWCASTLE TOWN HALL 95 

We hear no answer to that question from a Government 
which has called, again and again, for proof of public 
interest in the women's claim. Can those Liberals who 
vaunt their faith in the democracy, and who make flat- 
tering appeals to it — can they mean they care about the 
people's view only when that view is expressed at the 
polls? Then, indeed, was the throng in Parliament 
Square on October 13th not " the people," and instead of 
the fair words to which the masculine part of it is ac- 
customed at the polls, deserved the hustling it got. 

On that evening while the three leaders lay in the 
cells of the Bow Street police court awaiting trial, a 
deputation, led by Miss Wallace-Dunlop, left Caxton 
Hall and pressed through the crowds in the direction of 
the Houses of Parliament. The police broke the ranks 
of the deputation, and those persons impossible to turn 
back, or put out of action, were arrested. 

When news of this result reached Caxton Hall, a sec- 
ond deputation, three times as large, set forth on the 
same errand. The struggle between the women and the 
police went on till midnight, with the usual tale of ar- 
rests. But except for the disorder created by the police 
obstruction of the deputation, the vast crowd which had 
responded to the Suffragists' invitation was quiet and 
well-behaved. 

During the trial of the Suffragist leaders for issuing 
the " rush " hand-bill, attention was drawn to the im- 
punity with which the Labour member, Mr. Will Thorne, 
had incited the hunger-stricken unemployed to " rush " 
bakers' shops. A summons was thereupon tardily issued 
against Mr. Thorne, merely, as he himself said, because 
of Miss Pankhurst's use (in the course of the trial) of 
this latest instance of the man's being allowed to steal 



96 WAY STATIONS 

the horse while women were punished for looking over 
the wall. 

The Labour M.P. slipped out of his little difficulty by- 
giving bond to be of good behaviour. The Suffragettes 
gave no bond to alter their behaviour, and accepted full 
responsibility for their action. The case became the talk 
of the town. It was such a ventilation of women's po- 
litical grievances as had never yet been obtained. Miss 
Pankhurst succeeded in putting two Cabinet Ministers 
into the witness-box. The astonishing skill and resource- 
fulness with which she conducted the examination of the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Lloyd George, and the 
then Home Secretary, Mr. Herbert Gladstone, gave many 
people their first measure of her power. But those who 
had been watching her for the previous two years had 
already recognised in that original and dauntless mind, 
stored and disciplined beyond its years, the force which 
should shape the course of modern history. To say so 
much will seem like extravagance to persons standing 
aside from the Woman's Movement. In the words of the 
Prime Minister : " Wait and see." 

Miss Pankhurst, her mother, Mrs. Drummond, and 
many of the members of the deputations of October 13th, 
were sent to prison. 

The months that followed brought the trial and impris- 
onment of Mrs. Baines, and of many others, for their 
share in interrupting the meetings of Cabinet Ministers 
and for other " demonstrations." One of these, made in 
the House of Commons by members of the Freedom 
League, resulted in a temporary taking down of the ob- 
noxious grille from the Ladies' Gallery, and a further 
addition to the number of Suffragists in Holloway Gaol. 

Still more went to prison from the Albert Hall meet- 



AT NEWCASTLE TOWN HALL 97 

ing arranged by the Women's Liberal Federation. The 
disturbing element here was supplied by Mr. Lloyd 
George, with his unlucky promise of " a message from 
the Government." For he had none of any moment to 
deliver. The more practical women in the audience were 
the more angry at the affront to their intelligence. 
Pointed questions were hurled at the Minister, whose 
only answer was acquiescence in the hurling out of the 
hall of the questioners. The scene was a very horrible 
one, and fatally damaging to many a woman's hope of 
what Mr. Lloyd George might do for the Suffrage. The 
Liberal organ, the " Manchester Guardian," admitted 
that the ejections from the meeting were affected with 
a brutality well-nigh " nauseating." The " Standard " 
said some of the worst acts of unnecessary violence took 
place within ten yards of the chairman's table, and 
therefore under the eyes of Mr. Lloyd George. The 
" Globe " said : " We see very genuine grounds for the im- 
patience displayed by Suffragettes at the Albert Hall. 
Mr. Lloyd George must have known that the declaration 
he had to make would have infuriated any body of men." 

The evil example condoned by the Chancellor of the 
Exchequer began to be followed at meetings throughout 
the country. The police appeared in force to protect 
Cabinet Ministers at their meetings. But at the meet- 
ings of " the weaker sex " there was seldom any — and 
never adequate — protection granted to women from 
those who tried to break up the gathering, to burn of- 
fensive-smelling chemicals, to let loose rats and mice, and 
to assault the speakers. 

The assembling of Parliament for the first time in 
1909 still brought no mention of women's claims in the 
Speech from the Throne, 



98 WAY STATIONS 

A seventh " Women's Parliament " met in Caxton Hall 
on February 24th, and saw a deputation go out (headed 
by Mrs. Pethick Lawrence) to battle a little way towards 
the Houses of Parliament, and in the end to join their 
companions in Holloway Gaol. 

An eighth " Women's Parliament " was held at the 
end of March, and a deputation, headed by Mrs. Saul 
Soloman, widow of the late Governor-General for South 
Africa, set out for the Strangers* Entrance to the House 
of Commons, only to find, as their predecessors had, that 
it led those " strangers " who were Suffragettes to a 
London prison. 



vn 

SIGNS OF THE TIMES* 

Printed in Votes for Women, March, 1909. 

" But he answered and said unto them, When 
it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather; for 
the heaven is red. And in the morning, It will 
be foul weather to-day, for the heaven is red and 
lowering. Ye know how to discern the face of 
the heaven: but ye cannot discern the signs 
of the times." 

Among the signs that might instruct the politically 
weatherwise is the last election news from Denmark. 
The first occasion upon which women were eligible 
as candidates, seven have been elected to the Copen- 
hagen Municipal Council. 

Norway granted three-fifths of her women the full 
Parliamentary franchise two years ago, and the plan 
works so well that the Royal Council has recom- 
mended that the remaining two-fifths of the vote- 
less women should also be given equal citizenship 
rights. 

In Italian politics the most significant fact, chosen 
out of all others for telegraphing to " The Times " 
— which, of all papers, can least be supposed to 

* Speech delivered at the Queen's Hall, London. 

99 



100 WAY STATIONS 

welcome such news — is the prominence given to 
Woman Suffrage at the General Election last week 
in Rome. 

In regard to those parts of America longest set- 
tled and supposedly most enlightened, we were in- 
formed a few short months ago, the Woman Suf- 
frage Cause had been killed. But the latest ad- 
vices (through the non-partisan Press of Boston) 
tell how two thousand Suffragists stormed the 
State House during the legislative hearing of the 
Julia Ward Howe Bill. That staid and most con- 
servative of New England papers, the " Boston 
Transcript, 5 ' called the occasion " the biggest 
Woman Suffrage demonstration which Boston has 
ever seen.' 5 The " American " said : " Never had 
such a scene been witnessed on Beacon Hill. 55 The 
daily papers devoted columns to description and 
comment; and persons who succeeded in gaining the 
much-coveted admission to the hearing, report the 
same sort of change in the latter-day treatment of 
the question which has been remarked in the House 
of Commons. In the Boston State House, too, the 
same opposer who for years has made his speech 
the occasion for ventilating a cheap facetiousness, 
spoke last month for the first time with gravity and 
decorum. The late proceedings are admitted on 
every side by the American Press to mark a notable 
advance for the Cause in the Eastern States. 

And what of England ! Just as truly as the body 
sitting at St* Stephen's is accounted tire Mother of 



SIGNS OF THE TIMES 101 

Parliaments — just so truly may the Woman Suf- 
frage agitation in this country be called the Mother 
of the world-wide New Movement. The late-born 
corporate spirit among women (taking its hundred 
different aspects according to character and oppor- 
tunity) — this new inspiration lifting up the women 
East and West — had its birth in England. To 
England the peoples look for its highest expression. 
One witness to the truth of this came in the signifi- 
cant utterance of a Norwegian the other day: 
" We did not want to see our women going through 
what the English women have gone through. We 
knew that, with the English example before the 
Norwegian women, they would do the same. Rather 
than see that we enfranchised our women." 

Not only from afar off may the Signs of the Times 
be read. Look down the columns of our paper, 
at the notices of meetings to be held and of those 
which have taken place within the week, but do not 
forget that the reported meetings represent less 
than a tenth of those that are held. British Suf- 
frage Unions and Societies of every political com- 
plexion spread like a network over the kingdom, and 
next month will see the International Woman's Suf- 
frage Alliance holding its Convention in London. 

One of the most significant of the isolated 
" Signs " was the profession of faith recently of- 
fered to the Prime Minister by the women doctors. 
Out of the total number of qualified medical women 
in Great Britain, but fifteen did not join in asking 



102 WAY STATIONS 

for the vote! When one thinks of what those five 
to six hundred women stand for — of trained skill 
and exceptional knowledge of life amongst all sorts 
and conditions — this " Sign " alone might, one 
feels, have helped the least weatherwise among the 
authorities to a rational forecast. 

But, looming high above all the other Signs, 
standing out like " a great sea mark, 5 ' is the fact 
that something like 400 women have gone to prison 
in their determination to make as clear as voteless 
people can that they will not patiently endure their 
present outlawry. While you read these words 
more than thirty women of character and standing 
are living the life of the second-class prisoner in 
Holloway Gaol. And this has come about — 
through the endeavour of those women to help the 
authorities to interpret, and to take to heart, the 
most significant of all the Signs of the Times. But 
those who, seeing " a cloud rise out of the west, 
straightway sat/, ' There cometh a shower, 9 " are not 
able, it would seem, to discern the meaning, or 
gauge the elemental force, that lies behind this cloud 
of witnesses. 

So little weatherwise are the political prophets 
they even think that prison as a means of protest 
has been weakened by repetition and robbed of its 
significance. 

But going to prison has not lost its poignant 
significance to those who suffer the ordeal, nor to 



SIGNS OF THE TIMES 103 

those who do not blind themselves to what that 
ordeal involves. 

There are people who think the Suffragette is 
pleased to " advertise " her hardships, and that she 
gets her reward out of " posing as a martyr. 95 But 
the truth is, there are few things rarer than to find 
a Suffrage ex-prisoner exhibiting any readiness to 
dwell upon what she has suffered. I have some- 
times felt that the comfortable people, who " take 
it out " in criticising, are riot so much to blame. 
Perhaps they ought to be given a better oppor- 
tunity to realise what imprisonment means. But, 
no ; your Suffragette is both too proud and too busy. 
Also, she is terribly afraid of seeing the Suffrage 
Movement side-tracked on to prison reform. " No," 
she says ; " keep to the point "— in spite of semi- 
asphyxiation, disgusting food, the aching misery of 
plank beds, damp cement, midsummer days of chok- 
ing airlessness and winter nights of graveyard 
chill — " keep to the point ! The point is Votes." 

Well, I shall disobey the unwritten Suffragette 
law and say a few words about this same prison 
ordeal which I have not gone through myself, and 
which I yet know something about. 

Perhaps one reason that I feel I may speak of it 
is that I have not endured it in my own person. 

When you see the women coming out of Hollo- 
way to the welcome of flags and the music of bands 
— some of you, even of you who do not grossly mis- 



104 WAY STATIONS 

judge the Suffragettes, find difficulty in realising 
what these prisoners with the smiling faces have 
lived through. " Why," people say to one another, 
" this going to prison can't be anything like what 
we thought it was! If it were half as bad as we 
imagined, nobody would ever try it twice! Some of 
these women have been oftener still! Going to 
prison is played out ! " 

Why is it, then, that in spite of misapprehension 
on the part of many of the great middle class, in 
spite of the contemptuous shoulder-shrugging of 
the authorities — why is it that every time women 
go to prison to forward this reform, they actually 
and very palpably do forward it? And the answer 
to that question brings us face to face with a prob- 
lem which confronts all leaders of reform. 

We must remember that one of the most difficult 
things in the world is to induce the preoccupied 
public to stop and reconsider the merits of an opinion 
they have begun by regarding with prejudice. The 
primary concern of the practical reformer is : How 
shall people be made to give this matter a fair hear- 
ing? All the comparatively easy ways are tried 
first. Women's appeal was in the beginning made 
to reason. You know the result, In America the 
result was epitomised a few weeks ago by President 
Roosevelt's saying he was lukewarm about the Suf- 
frage because women were lukewarm. In England 
politicians say they were warmly in favour till 
women became so hot. On this side the Atlantic 



SIGNS OF THE TIMES 105 

feminine fervour cools the generous ardour of the 
legislator. On the other side it is the absence of 
warmth in the Suffragist that left the President 
cold. I do not think it is American partiality that 
makes me imagine Mr. Roosevelt shows himself a 
better weather-prophet than the authorities here. 
Whatever we may think about his statesmanship or, 
his love of abstract justice, we must admit he reads 
aright The Signs of the Times. The American 
Government will find less inconvenience result from 
withholding the Suffrage from women than will the 
Government of England. You have not in all the 
world at the present moment a better apologist for 
W.S.P.U. tactics than Mr. Roosevelt. Here at 
home your political weather-prophets are like those 
who, when they " see a cloud rise out of the west, 
straightway say, 6 There cometh a shower'"; and 
so it is. And when the south wind blows they say, 
" There will be heat ; and it cometh to pass." But 
as in the old days, these who " can discern the face 
of the sky and of the earth," cannot discern " the 
signs of the times*" 

In the symbol offered them by the woman who 
goes to prison, the political weather-prophet can 
discern no meaning. 

" We were a little stirred as well as shocked at 
first," they tell you. " But we are no longer stirred, 
and hardly even shocked." 

And because they are able to deaden what human 
sympathy they have — because they can look on 



106 WAY STATIONS 

unmoved while women suffer — the public, too, they 
think, is equally indifferent. 

But they are wrong. The public is anything but 
indifferent. 

And this is why. 

To the toiling millions prison is real. 

In the great body of the electorate there are 
people who realise that going to prison is a ghastly 
business. 

Justice is the stepmother of the poor. The poor 
know the heaviness of her hand. Few great aggre- 
gations of the populace where there is not someone 
who has been caught in our clumsy municipal ma- 
chinery — someone who has suffered and been torn. 
Those who have not first-hand knowledge have heard. 
Prison for them is not a thing to shrug the shoul- 
ders at ; neither lurid legend nor queer anachronism, 
scarce credible as an accompaniment of twentieth- 
century progress. 

Prison is real to the poor. In the person of some 
relation or friend it has been a horrible fact. No 
danger of their sharing the illusion of the middle- 
class woman, entrenched in her comfortable igno- 
rance, leaning back against her cushions and saying : 
" Holloway can't be so bad, or the Suffragettes 
could never get so many people to go there 
Strange forgetfulness of the fortitude possible to 
the human soul! 

Say to your neighbour at a dinner-party, " Those 
women seem rather to like it." But don't dare say 



55 



SIGNS OF THE TIMES 107 

that to the people at the polls. There will be those 
who know better. 

Men and women who would understand the signs 
of the times must remember that the comfortable 
person's paraded indifference to women's imprison- 
ment is offset by the enormously greater number 
who are not blind to the significance of hundreds of 
women voluntarily entering the gates of Holloway. 

Anyone who doubts this has only to watch the 
electric effect of the coming of a relay of newly 
released prisoners into the field during a by-election. 
Easy enough to denounce their appearance as " a 
cheap electioneering dodge." If it were really so 
" cheap," if it were not in truth very costly, it 
would not have its invariable effect upon the voters. 
The reason it is so potent is, as I say, that in the 
great mixed crowds that gather round the public 
speakers at election time are always these people 
who know. Even for them — at no time used to 
much creature comfort — even for them, hardened 
to harsh treatment and sordid environment, some 
of them — (enough to make actual the women's 
sacrifice) — know the fierce pinch of prison days. 
The effect of that sacrifice upon the masses is enor- 
mous. It is incalculable. They look at these deli- 
cate women and say, " She knows ! Very few of the 
gentlefolk know. That woman standing there in the 
wind and the rain, she knows ! She was under 
no compulsion to share the heavy knowledge of the 
hard-pressed. She must be buoyed up by some 



108 WAY STATIONS 

strange power unknown to the petty offender. 
What power? Let us listen and find out. 5 ' 

By going to prison the Suffragette has done two 
things. She has proved her faith to those who know 
the harsher side of life ; and she has brought herself 
through suffering into more direct relation with the 
masses than she could have done by all the academic 
eloquence in the world. 

The perhaps too common silence of the Suffra- 
gette as to the price she has paid does not here make 
for misunderstanding. These people have seen the 
cowed and beaten look many another sort of pris- 
oner has brought out of the same sort of experi- 
ence ; they know all about the strain on the nerves 
and the courage, the unconquerable sickness at sight 
of the food, the windows that cannot admit air. In 
their dumb way some of these people, too, have felt 
the atmosphere, not to be shut out, that penetrates 
the prison walls. The " Geist der stets verneint " is 
in possession there. The spirit that denies all hope 
of understanding or of betterment, that harshly re- 
presses every natural human emotion. 

Who that heard will ever forget the tone and 
haunted look of that prisoner who once admitted 
the acid-like corrosion wrought upon the mind by 
the " warder-voice. 55 And she excused the warders 
— "not their fault, 55 she said, "that the only 
people who may speak to you have a special voice 
for prisoners. A voice that isn't human, 55 she said, 
with trembling lips,-" a voice of iron. 55 Such kind- 



SIGNS OF THE TIMES 109 

ness as, in spite of all, creeps into the relation must 
be hidden like a felony. 

Some of us remembered the Suffrage prisoners 
when we read the other day that Sir Walter Scott 
once quoted an opinion that women go mad seldomer 
than men. " I fancy," he said, " if this be true, it 
is in some degree owing to the little manual works in 
which they are constantly employed, which regulate 
in some degree the current of ideas, as the pendulum 
of the timepiece. I do not know if this is sense or 
nonsense ; but I am sensible that if I were in solitary 
confinement without either the power of taking ex- 
ercise or employing myself in study, six months 
would make me a madman or an idiot." 

When he came over to lecture for the Berlitz 
School a few weeks ago M. Richepin told us how 
the poet Verlaine, after trying to kill his friend by 
shooting him, was sent to prison for two years. 
But Verlaine was given all the books he asked for. 
In those two years he taught himself English. He 
read Shakespeare, so the lecturer said, from end to 
end before he had finished his term. What would 
not some of the imprisoned Suffragettes give for a 
chance to occupy their minds to that extent? But 
they, so far from having injured their friends, have 
not even tried to injure their enemies. Yet they 
are less well treated than a French citizen convicted 
of manslaughter. 

" Ye say . . . in the morning, It will be foul 
weather to-day: for the sky is red and lowering." 



110 WAY STATIONS 

Does it tell men nothing that some of the Suffrage 
prisoners before they tried going to Holloway had 
grown grey working among the poor and the lost? 
And some of the prisoners are young — full of a 
generous fire as illuminating as experience, lighting 
up the Wrong that could never touch them, but 
which they have pledged themselves to banish out 
of the world. A few weeks of prison! Can you 
not realise that the woman bearing that may see 
in herself a type of the Immemorial Woman — the 
burden-bearer of the world? 

Prison? What evil there can visit her that will 
not pale by the side of what evil women bear outside 
those walls? 

One seems to hear the prisoner in her darkest 
hour reproach her heart as the Gre^k hero 
did : " Endure, my heart, far worse hast thou 
endured." 

She comes out smiling, do you say? Yes. Her 
smiling is a symbol of her faith. But you may be- 
lieve that, as she sits alone there in her narrow cell, 

..." tears 
Are in her eyes; and in her ears 
The murmur of a thousand years/' 

I do not ask on behalf of those women what they 
do not ask for themselves. They do not ask for 
sympathy. They went to prison for " a sign." 
The question is: Can you read it? Can you even 
discern the two strange and unexpected things that 



SIGNS OF THE TIMES 111 

have come out of women's going to prison in the 
cause of Suffrage? 

First : a fact not easily given its due weight — the 
fact that through their suffering and voluntary 
acceptance of the badge of humiliation, they have 
come close to the poor. Second: most difficult, 
most precious gain of all, the poor have come close 
to them. 

In a democratic country this is a circumstance 
of the first magnitude. Well may the most astute 
statesman be given pause when he reflects that there 
is no body of educated men in Europe to-day in such 
close touch with the hard-pressed, disinherited mil- 
lions as the women who have gone to prison for the 
Vote. 

TIME TABLE 

March — May, 1909 

As will have already appeared, this commentary concerns 
itself, chiefly, with the fortunes of the W.S.P.U. — 
the Society best known to me. I would not for a mo- 
ment wish to minimise the work of the others — least of 
all the old-established National Union of Suffrage Soci- 
eties, of which Mrs. Henry Fawcett, ll.d., is the Presi- 
dent. This important organisation, during the time I 
write of, multiplied its branches and secured a following 
whose steady, unhasting, unresting, educational work, es- 
pecially in conservative quarters, was building up a power 
destined presently to astonish the unbeliever. 

The new spirit which had been breathed into the exist- 
ing bodies was of a nature so vigorous and independent 



112 WAY STATIONS 

that it has kept on seeking and finding newer channels, 
as well as brimming the old. 

In addition to the Freedom League there was pres- 
ently to be a Conservative and Unionist League, a Church 
League, a London Graduates' Union, a London Society 
for Woman Suffrage, a Tax Resistance League, an 
Artists' Suffrage League, a Political Reform League, a 
Cymric Suffrage Union, a Scottish League, an Irish 
W. S. S., The Fabian Group of Women, The Free 
Church League, a Catholic W. S. S., a New Constitu- 
tional Society, the Men's League for Women's Suffrage, 
the Men's Political Union, the Men's Federation for 
Women's Suffrage, the Men's Committee for Justice to 
Women, the Suffrage Atelier, the Actresses' League, the 
Women Writers' League, and I know not how many 
dozens more. 

The last-named was formed in 1908 by Miss Cicely 
Hamilton and Miss Bessie Hatton. Its constitution was 
drawn up by Miss Hamilton early in 1909. The fol- 
lowing is a copy of the leaflet sent out to announce the 
function and scope of the Society. 

WOMEN WRITERS' SUFFRAGE LEAGUE 

President: Miss Elizabeth Robins. 

Chairman of Committee: Miss Cicely Hamilton. 

Hon. Treasurer: Miss Ethel Hill. 

Hon. Secretary: Miss Bessie Hatton, at the Office of 

the League, 55 Berners Street, Oxford Street, W. 

Telephone: 1808 City. 

The object of the Women Writers' Suffrage League is 
to obtain the Parliamentary Franchise for women on the 
same terms as it is, or may be granted to men. 

Its methods are the methods proper to writers — the 
use of the pen. 



SIGNS OF THE TIMES 113 

It is entirely independent of any other suffrage soci- 
ety; at the same time it was formed with the intention of 
assisting every other suffrage society by the methods 
proper to writers. 

The qualification for membership is the publication or 
production of a book, article, story, poem or play for 
which the author has received payment, and a subscription 
of 2s. 6d. to be paid annually, financial year ending De- 
cember. 

Women Writers are urged to join the League. A body 
of writers working for a common object cannot fail to 
influence public opinion. 

Publications dealing with the enfranchisement of women 
are issued from time to time, and it is hoped that mem- 
bers will ensure ventilation of the subject in such ways 
as are open to them — by writing articles, taking part in 
newspaper correspondence, etc. 

Amongst the members of the League are — Olive 
Schriener, Alice Meynell, May Sinclair, Sarah Grand, 
Beatrice Harraden, Violet Hunt, Mrs. Israel Zangwill, 
Mrs. Havelock Ellis, Evelyn Sharp, Gertrude Warden, 
George Paston, Madeline Lucette Ryley, etc. 

Subscriptions and communications should be addressed 
to the Hon. Secretary. 

[The W.W.S.L. has held, besides its Annual General 
Meeting in each year, At Homes and other public enter- 
tainments, at most of which speeches were made and lit- 
erature sold of a propagandist nature. 

At the Waldorf Hotel Reception, May 4th, 1909, the 
speakers were: the President, in the Chair; Mrs. Philip 
Snowden, Miss Evelyn Sharp, Mrs. Nevinson, Miss Cicely 
Hamilton, Mr. Zangwill, Mr. Pett Ridge. Hostesses: 
Mrs. Cohen, Madame Sarah Grand, Miss Beatrice Har- 
raden.] 



VIII 

FOR THE WOMEN WRITERS * 

To the Women Writers' Suffrage League: 
• . . We do not forget that, long before John Stu- 
art Mill wrote about the Subjection of Women, a 
woman, and a woman of genius, called upon the think- 
ing world to revise its views as to women's relation to 
civilised society. 

Personally, I have never found it easy to divide 
our human benefits into those coming from men and 
those coming from women. But the frequent dis- 
position to make this distinction is only part of a 
general tendency which Suffragists are concerned to 
see arrested. My own adhesion to the Suffrage 
Cause was given largely because I saw that only 
through political equality may we hope to see estab- 
lished a true understanding and a happier relation- 
ship between the sexes. 

Changes in the constitution of society, changes 
lying too deep to be touched on here in the brief 
time at my disposal, have long been tending towards 
increased separation between men and women, in 
practically all the interests of life save one. In the 
world of industry, of business, of thought — even 
in what is called society, the growing tendency has 
* At the Waldorf Hotel, London, May 4, 1909. 

114 



FOR THE WOMEN WRITERS 115 

been to divide the world into two separate camps. 
Men who are " doing things," or want to do things, 
have less and less time to give to an order of beings 
having no share and, as it came to seem, no stake in 
the varied aspects — save one — - of the great game 
of life. 

Briefly then, the conditions of modern life were 
more and more separating the sexes. Instead of 
still further dividing us, Woman's Suffrage is in 
reality the bridge across the chasm. 

As a League of Women Writers in sympathy with 
this new bond between men and women we may, I 
think, take a legitimate pride in remembering the 
origin of the first clear and effectual enunciation of 
woman's claim to stand beside her brother in the 
world's work. 

We find a peculiar fitness in the fact that the first 
ordered and reasoned vindication of woman should 
have been put forth by a woman. If hers was not 
the first book on the subject, it was the first to affect 
the thought of the time. And it was the one des- 
tined, by its originality and its vigour, to survive 
the winnowing of a hundred years. Of course, I 
speak of the work of Mary Wollstonecraft. 

I venture to think that no mightier seed has been 
sown in iihe world's garden. 

If, in all the years since its planting, no writing of 
so profound a political significance has come from 
the hand of woman as Mary Wollstonecraft's " Vin- 
dication," certainly the spirit that inspired that 



116 WAY STATIONS 

brave book is alive to-day under a myriad guises. 
Even if that spirit had not recently found expres- 
sion in so many ways, and in writings so diverse as 
Miss Cicely Hamilton's " Marriage as a Trade/' 
and Mrs. Sydney Webb's share in the Minority Re- 
port on the Poor Law Commission ■ — we must have 
known that one of the most important, most indis- 
pensable services to Social Reform would have to 
be undertaken by the Writers. 

The magnificent platform work being done from 
various centres must be supplemented and further 
spread about the world through the medium of the 
written word. I don't mean merely by frankly 
propagandist writing (though I am the last to deny 
the importance of that), but even more valuable is, 
I think, the spirit of fairness, and of nobler thinking 
about women, a spirit which both men- and women- 
writers are able in a thousand ways to illustrate and 
justify. 

It is the business (the business as well as the high 
privilege) of men- and women-writers to correct the 
false ideas about women which many writers of the 
past have fostered. 

We are sometimes reminded that though there have 
been Women of Letters for centuries, they have 
done comparatively little to deserve a place beside 
Men of Letters, and still less to win a place beside 
the Philosophers. 

But we remember, too, the sort of encouragement 
that has always been meted out to the femmes 



FOR THE WOMEN WRITERS 117 

savantes of the past. We remember the treatment 
accorded to Mary Wollstonecraft, to Susan B. 
Anthony and, in a mitigated degree, to their follow- 
ers down to this hour. We cannot pretend to feel 
surprised if the mass of women have hitherto ven- 
tured to taste of publicity, as they say the hounds 
on the Nile bank drink at the river — running, to 
avoid the crocodile. 

But not to go too deeply into the question of the 
value or the volume of woman's literary work — if 
we admit (as, of course, we do) that the great mass 
of the world's literature is of man's making, women 
may, by so much, hold themselves more innocent than 
men, of popularising certain errors about feminine 
nature. 

Now, Suggestion is a mighty force. It is perhaps 
mightier even than has yet been demonstrated by 
Modern Science. How much, we ask, how much of 
woman's past and even her present futility is due to 
writers constantly dinning it into her ears that for 
purposes of all activity, save one sort, she is a poor 
creature and, in comparison with her brother, is 
as moonlight unto sunlight and as water unto 
wine? * 

Even the noble-minded Wordsworth could say 
apologetically of love: 

" Though his seat be feeble woman's breast." 

i Milton was an arch-culprit in encouraging this degradation 
of the idea of womanhood, a fact emphasised in Miss M. W. 
Thompson's pamphlet "Adam and Eve," 



118 WAY STATIONS 

You remember, too, Wordsworth's idea of the way 
in which the returned spirit of the Greek warrior 
would address his well-loved wife? 

ft Thou, strong in love, art all too weak in reason, 
In self-government too slow/' 

Then we have the verdict of the modern poet, 
using prose for once that he may be quite clear* 
Speaking of the old culture, he says that it was 
" like a good woman." Ah ! a good woman. That 
sounds hopeful. What is the Good Woman like in 
the estimation of Mr. Modern Poet. You read on 
and find that a Good Woman " gives all for love." 
We have noticed a great unanimity about that. It 
is the condition always named first, as the prime 
essential in the good woman. " She gives all for 
love, and" (the poet continues a little anxiously) 
" is never jealous." That is also important. But 
listen to the climax. She gives all for love, she is 
never jealous, and " is ready to do all the talk- 
ing ... ! " That surprises you. Woman is not 
accustomed to being invited so cordially to do even 
a share of the talking. But the poet is quick to 
guard against our misunderstanding his urbanity. 
The good woman is ready, he says, to do all the 
talking " when we are tired" 

The ineffable majesty of that " We " is a thing to 
remember. But we shall forget it. We are rich in 
pearls of this sort. 



FOR THE WOMEN WRITERS 119 

Nothing would be easier than to multiply these 
quotations, but we prefer to say straightforwardly 
that we want men to help us not only to win the 
vote, but to redress the balance of Suggestion. 
Women realise that they have wasted a great deal 
of precious time in triyng to be as weak as was ex- 
pected. We have long been told that the cleverest 
woman is she who successfully conceals her clever- 
ness. I am bound to admit that many of us have 
succeeded to a charm in that enterprise. But I 
protest that a great deal of our success was the 
result of the power of Suggestion. More than one 
generation was taught that the truly feminine way 
of meeting any crisis was to fall in a graceful faint. 
As a womanly accomplishment, swooning long ranked 
with dancing and wool-work. It survives (that 
accommodating desire to be as feeble as man may 
require) in the readiness with which a girl will sub- 
due her physical strength, and allow herself to be 
helped (even by the most casual and indifferent 
acquaintance) to mount a stile, or to cross a brook, 
tasks which the able-bodied young woman is as com- 
petent to undertake as is the man at her side. Not 
the most inveterate romanticist among us has the 
smallest fear that when the young woman no longer 
conceals her ability to ford the brook alone — that 
her cavalier will find no means of showing his manly 
resourcefulness and his devotion. 

For the rest, we need to be told not how weak we 



120 WAY STATIONS 

are, but how strong we are. And I do not think 
that even in that we differ so much from men. 
But we shall hear, 

TIME TABLE 

May — July, 1909 

Early in the summer of 1909 Mrs. Pankhurst again ad- 
dressed the Prime Minister by letter. She told him that 
a Ninth Parliament of Women would meet on June 29th, 
that a resolution would be framed, and that it would be 
taken to him by a deputation which would wait on him 
at the House of Commons at eight o'clock that same even- 
ing. Mrs. Pankhurst added that the deputation could 
accept no compromise, and must insist upon their consti- 
tutional right to be received. The Prime Minister re- 
turned the usual formal refusal. 

But for the resourcefulness of the W.S.P.U. leaders, 
the issue of this deputation would have differed in no 
way from that of the many others. The leaders were 
wise enough to see that the best immediate change that 
could be looked for, with any confidence, would be the 
removal from police-court jurisdiction of the cases arising 
out of arrest. 

The political motive behind these demonstrations would 
stand a far better chance of ventilation and comprehen- 
sion if tried by jury. 

The legalised number of persons composing the previ- 
ous deputations had deliberately been exceeded, in the 
hope that the offenders might, as was threatened, be 
charged under a Statute of Charles II, which limited the 
number of petitioners to twelve. But the need, in apply- 



FOR THE WOMEN WRITERS 121 

ing this law, to carry suffrage cases out of comparative 
obscurity, into the strong light of the higher Court, no 
doubt prevented the revival of the ancient method of 
dealing with inconvenient demands. 

There remained for voteless persons The Bill of Rights. 

This concession of the time of William and Mary 
enunciated the right of the subject to petition the King. 
As the King, by the custom of our time, abstains from 
intervention in political affairs, petitions upon any such 
ground are addressed to the head of the party in power. 
To the Prime Minister, then, as representing the King, 
petitioners must submit their grievances. If the peti- 
tioners are men, they may find difficulty in securing re- 
dress, but no body of people finds difficulty in securing a 
hearing — with the exception of women who desire Citizen 
Eights. 

A week before the meeting of the Ninth Women's Par- 
liament Miss Wallace-Dunlop stencilled on the wall of 
St. Stephen's Hall — 

WOMEN'S DEPUTATION 

June 29 

BILL OF RIGHTS 

" It is the right of the Subject to petition the King, 
and all commitments and prosecutions for such 
petitioning are illegal" 

Miss Dunlop was escorted out of the Hall by the 
police before she could make sure the impression was 
clear. For a second attempt to remind Parliament that 
the ancient liberties of the English people could not be 
violated with impunity, Miss Dunlop was arrested, and 
tried on the charge of wilfully and maliciously damaging 



122 WAY STATIONS 

the wall of the House of Commons. She was convicted, 
and on refusal to pay a fine she was sent to prison. 

Miss Dunlop was in Holloway when the meeting so 
significantly advertised took place. 

The deputation which left Caxton Hall on the 29th of 
June was headed by Mrs. Pankhurst, Miss Neligan (a 
lady aged seventy-six, who had been headmistress of a 
girls' school), ajid six others. 

After scenes of violence and disorder, having their sole 
origin in the police opposition to the advance of the little 
band, Mrs. Panklmrst and her companions were arrested. 
The indignation of their friends and followers found new 
expression that night. 

As the horde of mounted police forced back the crowds 
that filled Parliament Square, a number of Suffragettes 
produced small stones round which petitions were wrapped, 
and choosing the lower windows on the ground floors of 
Government offices, dark and deserted at that hour, the 
stones with their messages were sent through the Govern- 
ment glass. A hundred and eight women were arrested. 
Ninety-four pleaded the right of the subject to petition. 
Their cases were suspended until " a point of law " had 
been examined in the High Court. The Lord Chief Jus- 
tice ruled that the right to petition undoubtedly existed. 
He proceeded to prove the foolishness of which the laws 
not infrequently give evidence, by adding that the King's 
representative was not obliged to receive the petition. 

It was like saying to the starving: Here is bread, but 
whoever eats shall be punished. 

Pending inquiry into the validity of the ancient Bill of 
Rights, the woman who had printed it on the walls of the 
House of Commons was shut up in Holloway, under such 
a sentence as is commonly passed on pickpockets and dis- 



FOR THE WOMEN WRITERS 123 

orderly drunkards : one month in the Third Division. This 
was not the first time Miss Wallace-Dunlop had gone to 
prison in the cause of women's political liberty. But ap- 
parently she had now made up her mind that the same 
treatment as is given to political prisoners when those 
prisoners are men should be given to political prisoners 
when they are women. The point was admirably taken. 
If a woman was able to compel acknowledgment of her 
political rights in His Majesty's prisons, the continued 
denial of her political rights outside would be shown in 
its essential absurdity. 

Furthermore, in the remaining time during which women 
are denied political recognition in the world outside, they 
might (as Miss Wallace-Dunlop was the first to prove) 
either secure that recognition in prison or secure their re- 
lease. To do this was to strike shrewdly at authority. 
But at a cost so great to the prisoner that no one believed 
it could be borne, least of all by a delicate woman. 

Nevertheless, Miss Dunlop secured her release from 
prison, and all but release from life, by ruthless use of 
the Hunger Strike. 

The effectiveness of this terrible weapon was recognised 
at once. 

The authorities supposed that in Miss Dunlop they had 
an example of such iron resolution as would not come their 
way again. 

The day that saw her discharge saw fourteen other 
Suffragettes sent to the same prison. Every one of them 
demanded political treatment. Failing it, every one of 
them adopted the Hunger Strike. 

The device was new, and little understood by the public. 

People who had never missed two consecutive meals in 
their lives joked and laughed at the idea of adding the 



12* WAY STATIONS 

slow torture of starvation to the other miseries of prison 
life. People who became savage if the fourth meal in the 
day were ten minutes late were perfectly certain the 
women wouldn't hold out. 



IX 

THE HUNGER STRIKE * 

To the Editor: 

Sir, Without going into the question of the law- 
fulness or the unlawfulness of the actions of the mili- 
tant Suffragettes (about which even the Doctors of 
the Law appear to disagree), I would like, as dispas- 
sionately as possible, to draw attention to a factor 
in the case not yet touched upon, not even recog- 
nised. 

I would first of all remind you that, for several 
years, women have endured /or their political opin- 
ion's sake such treatment as is meted out to drunk- 
ards and to thieves. Suffragettes have endured this 
for a cause which has been before the country for 
forty years, a cause to which 420 members of the 
the present House of Commons have given their adhe- 
sion, a cause of which a majority of the present Cabi- 
net are in favour. Now, if the traditional avenue 
through which voteless citizens can carry a grievance 
(the orderly petitioning of the King's representa- 
tive) — if that be barred, what are voteless citizens 
to do? 

If they are men, their practice has been either 

* Published in the Westminster Gazette, July 21, 1909. 

125 



126 WAY STATIONS 

to make the general public suffer for its apathy 
(by burning down buildings and by indiscriminate 
bloodshed) 9 or else they have made their opponents 
suffer in person. 

The women's way has all along been to take the 
brunt of the suffering upon themselves. 

It is this difference which has blinded many men 
to the force behind the woman's movement. It has 
led responsible officials to jeer at a " policy of pin- 
pricks," and to speak with pride of the way in which 
men forced the door " at which the ladies are scratch- 
ing.' 5 

The time has come when any available light should 
be shed upon this darkness, especially as a new phase 
has been entered upon by the fourteen members of 
the W.S.P.U., who feel that enough Suffragettes 
have undergone punishment in the Second and Third 
Divisions. These latest prisoners are trying in 
their own persons to ensure that the indignities they 
suffer shall be the last inflicted upon the women of 
this country on account of political agitation. 

My sympathies are somewhat engaged for the 
luckless persons to whom falls the no doubt repellent 
task of attempting to carry out the police magis- 
trates' sentence upon the women who " for a sign " 
broke windows in Government offices on that even- 
ing when the thirteenth deputation was forcibly 
turned away from the door of St. Stephen's. The 
wisdom that stepped in earlier to extricate the prison 
authorities from a single dilemma (in the case of 



THE HUNGER STRIKE 127 

Miss Wallace-Dunlop) may desert them when they 
are asked to apply it to fourteen. 

I find that no one thing so divides the world as 
the opinion as to how much may be expected from 
self-interest. To discover that certain people are 
ready to lay down what most regard as of para- 
mount importance, that is perplexing enough. 
Though the story of human fortitude is older than 
any history that is written in any book, the fortitude 
that will go any length still wears to the average 
mortal an air so strange that it runs the risk of not 
being recognised. Now, sir, my point is that these 
women know that. They undertake their " hunger 
strike " realising that it will be supposed they will 
not go so far with it as to do themselves mortal in- 
jury. They know the supposition will be that they 
are trying merely to frighten authority, and that 
they will prudently stop this side of a course that 
will bring them a release for which neither the Home 
Secretary's order, nor that of the King, will be 
needed. 

There are, without doubt, persons so angered 
against the Suffragettes as to say, " Very well ; 
let them expiate their foolishness with their 
lives." 

But that will not be the public view of the matter. 
Nor will it be the (intended) policy of the Govern- 
ment. It therefore seems necessary to say that in 
dealing with these women it will not do to count 
upon the usual canons of self-interest. There are 



128 WAY STATIONS 

those (whether among the Suffragettes now in Hollo- 
way or the thousands outside) — there are those 
prepared to pay any price that may be exacted for 
protesting against more women being made to suf- 
fer the indignities of the Second or Third Division 
— for what? For following to its logical conclu- 
sion an opinion they share with the majority of the 
legislators of this country. The prisoners know 
quite well how it may end for any one of them. The 
people who are not fully informed are those whom 
the country will hold responsible for the issue. And 
that seems to me not fair. There should be no 
avoidable misunderstanding as to the spirit (how- 
ever reprehensible) in which the "Hunger Strike" 
is undertaken. The women are laying hands upon 
a very terrible weapon, but there is no ground for 
hoping that, if they let it fall, others will not take 
the weapon up. That this should be so may be 
fanaticism. But it is also hard fact. Calling it 
names, good or bad, will not alter it. 

I know it is said that if the authorities do not 
deal stringently with these cases general disorder will 
ensue in England, and everyone hereafter who has 
a grievance will think he has only to break a few 
windows and gather a crowd in Westminster to get 
his will. But that is childishness. "Anyone" 
with a grievance hereafter who can get thousands of 
reputable people to espouse his cause, hundreds to 
go to prison for it, and the general public to give 
him fifty thousand pounds a year to spend on it, 



THE HUNGER STRIKE 129 

will have reason to be listened to. No cause is fed 
so fat on air. 

But my aim, Sir, in addressing you, is to pre- 
vent anyone's having a right, when one of these 
women succumbs in Holloway Gaol, to call the oc- 
currence " death by misadventure." It will be no 
accident. But for the Government it would be a 
misadventure which even their opponents would 
gladly see them spared, if one of these women (with 
the memory of the smiling Members of Parliament 
out for " fun " : to see how women meet the nerve- 
shattering horror of a contest with mounted police) 
— if, with that memory to nerve her, one of these 
prisoners forces the gates of Holloway and sets out 
upon the Great Adventure which even heroes evade 
as long as they may with honour. 
I am, Sir, your truly, 

Elizabeth Robins. 

Henfield, Sussex, July 21, 1909. 

TIME TABLE 
July 22 — December 3, 1909 

When the authorities realised that to keep the Hunger 
Strikers longer in prison would be to kill them, they were 
released. 

Self-starvation is known to induce sickness of several 
kinds. So great is the suffering entailed that strong men 
shrink from facing it. I have been told that seamen 
sometimes attempt the Hunger Strike as a protest against 
brutal treatment. My naval authority added that he could 



130 WAY STATIONS 

not remember hearing of a man who had held out longer 
than three days. There are Suffragettes who have 
starved for nearly twice as long, and then not given in 
till the prison gates were opened. 

We hear people saying that militant Suffragists are 
culpably impatient. Such critics ought, in justice to their 
own intelligence, to review the facts of this struggle. 
Few who do so will be able to deny that the militants 
have shown an almost unbelievable patience in accepting,, 
year in year out, without reprisal, the pains and penalties 
inflicted for those earlier, milder forms of militancy, 

In addition to the ceaseless, quieter, less horribly costly 
work of propaganda, the militants, ever since the summer 
of 1909, have gone to Ministers' meetings, and have asked 
that the responsible men of the country should promise 
to attend to this neglected side of the public business — 
the side concerned with the status of women. Ever since 
1909 women who dared to express publicly their sense 
of the urgency of this matter, have been set upon by men, 
gagged, beaten, and worse — - and then sent to prison. 

This is not a matter of opinion, but a matter of 
history. 

In prison these women, often passing through experi- 
ences calculated to unsettle reason, have consistently ad- 
hered to the grim terms of self-starvation till, on the brink 
of death, the authorities have set them free. Through in- 
juries received at Cabinet Ministers' meetings (as in the 
cases of Nurse Pitfield and of Miss Henria Williams), or 
through the effects of the Hunger Strike (as in the case 
of Mrs. Pankhurst's sister, Mrs. Clarke), women have 
died shortly after their release. 

If persons who have not followed these events, or who 
have forgotten them, wish to know something of the 



THE HUNGER STRIKE 131 

patience with which this grim sacrifice has been carried 
through, they should consult the last three years' files of 
" Votes for Women." They will find there names and 
details, as well as every means of instituting the most rigid 
examination. Those who think they have not time for 
that may learn much from a couple of chapters (XXI 
and XXII) in Miss Sylvia Pankhurst's valuable record, 
" The Suffragette." 

The authorities found out three years ago that there was 
no end to the number of women ready to payer de leurs 
personnes (as the proverb has it), the " costs " which a 
Liberal Government levied upon those who were unwilling 
to wait indefinitely for the enfranchisement of their sex. 
The problem which confronted the prison authorities was: 
how to punish people who were undaunted by solitary con- 
finement, by the rigours of the "punishment cell," by 
strait jackets, frog-marching, and other forms of per- 
sonal indignity — people ready, in addition to all this, 
calmly to starve themselves to death. 

That the undermining of the penal system might be 
arrested, a new deterrent was introduced into the prison 
treatment of women in September, 1909. An order went 
forth that prisoners who would not eat were no longer to 
be released when starvation threatened to set them free. 
They were to be forcibly fed. 

According to an array of medical authorities, this pro- 
cess, even when employed upon an unresisting patient, is 
painful and dangerous. When fought against it becomes 
a mode of torture. It can be persisted in only at the cost 
of reason or of life. 

The medical profession behaved well in bringing these 
facts to the notice of Parliament and of the public. A 
memorial was sent to the Prime Minister. Letters of pro- 



132 WAY STATIONS 

test bearing names eminent in the world of science ap- 
peared in the press. 

To their lifelong shame some doctors were found ready 
to be the tools of the Government in carrying out this 
abominable expedient. The question of Forcible Feeding 
was ignorantly debated in the House of Commons to an 
accompaniment of laughter. But outside, were medical 
men who cared for the honour of their profession. They 
denounced publicly the use of a member of a humane call- 
ing to execute physical punishment upon defenceless pris- 
oners, overpowered, gagged, bound — for to that depth is 
the prison doctor degraded who inflicts this suffering. 

Moreover, those medical men who protested are proved, 
at the cost of many a woman's agony, to be in the right. 
The brutal device does achieve its unavowed end. It tor- 
tures political prisoners. It does not achieve its avowed 
end. Its avowed end is to maintain life. But, as medical 
men had warned the authorities, people who fight against 
forcible feeding are not nourished and cannot be kept 
alive and sane. These prisoners for conscience* sake, 
girls and white-haired women, are merely tortured to the 
verge of the grave, and then turned out wrecks of 'their 
former selves. I have seen a girl go into prison young, 
blooming, looking twenty years old. I have seen her 
after her experience of forcible feeding. Not directly 
after, either, but at the end of some weeks of nursing back 
to life. And in broad day I did not recognise her. I 
thought in the bent figure and drawn face I was looking 
at someone of middle age who was a prematurely old 
woman. s 

Many of us, who followed the history of the opposition 
to Woman Suffrage, learned that what goes by the name 
of callousness, or cruelty, is pften defective intelligence, a 



THE HUNGER STRIKE 133 

weakness in the faculty of realising things only heard 
about, not seen. The mass of people (and we among 
them) simply cannot make real to ourselves the sufferings 
of other people unless those other people are our friends 
or relations. Several of the women who have had most 
to do with militancy are free from, this limitation. 

One of them is Lady Constance Lytton. Her power 
of intense realisation of the burdens other women are 
carrying compelled her to bear a share. She had already 
been to prison for the Cause when, in October, 1909, her 
sympathy with a working-woman then being tortured in a 
Birmingham Gaol, led Lady Constance to take her place 
among those determined to make a protest. The occasion 
chosen was the next public appearance of a Member of the 
Government. To such a pass had domestic politics come 
that Cabinet Ministers dared no longer to invite the gen- 
eral public to listen to official speeches about public 
affairs. Admission was by ticket, and no woman was 
eligible. But Suffragettes were fertile in devices by 
which they brought their business before officials who 
shirked it. So the " protection of Cabinet Ministers *' 
became a growing charge upon the public purse. When 
Mr. Lloyd George went to Newcastle, in October, 1909, 
to talk about Liberal policy, he was obliged to go under 
escort. He found the approaches to the " public " Hall 
guarded by police, barricades erected in the streets, and 
the place wearing the air of a city under siege. No 
Suffragettes being allowed in the hall, their task, as 
they conceived it, was to make their presence felt out- 
side. 

Perhaps I have given an impression that the women 
were quite alone in this struggle, but for Mr. Pethick 
Lawrence. That was not the case. Men friends of the 



134 WAY STATIONS 

Cause had already done and suffered much, and were 
both to do and to suffer more. 

In this Newcastle meeting, as in others from which 
women were excluded, men stood up and called on the 
official speaker to apply Liberal principles to the treat- 
ment of women. But in Newcastle, as elsewhere, though 
men might interrupt and " heckle " with impunity upon 
any other ground under heaven, the man who dared so 
much as mention the one thing taboo was thrown out of 
the hall. When several men had been ejected from Mr. 
Lloyd George's Newcastle meeting, the Minister made 
his contribution to the flood of obloquy let loose upon 
those who believed in showing Liberalism towards women 
as well as towards men. While his supporters applied 
physical force, the Minister's contribution to the moral 
aspect of the struggle was to call those men " hirelings " 
who dared to be genuine Suffragists. The press reported 
Mr. Lloyd George as saying : " There are many ways of 
earning a living, but this is the most objectionable of 
them all." The speaker made clear that from his point 
of view any man who should insist that Woman Suffrage 
be amongst the important issues considered at a Liberal 
meeting must be " hired " to hold so far-fetched a theory 
of public duty. 

In England the standard of official character and the 
ideal of public service are, in the main, as I believe, the 
best the world yet knows. Nevertheless in these now fa- 
miliar charges that selfish aims inspired the sacrifices made 
by Suffragists ; the cry of " bribes " and " Tory gold," 
(when the sixpences and shillings of working-women 
have shown so fine a total) ; the taunt of " hireling " 
sent after beaten and bruised protesters at Ministers' 
meetings — these things seem to argue a conscious mean- 



THE HUNGER STRIKE 135 

ness in the spirit which still animates many a public serv- 
ant. He seems in his heart to know that he could not 
face such treatment as is meted out to Suffragists unless 
he were " hired/' And he cannot help betraying his true 
character as less servant of the public welfare than slave 
of his personal ambition. But in the Liberal rank and 
file, as well as in the Unionist, Irish, and Labour parties, 
was genuine championship of the Suffrage Cause. A 
notable example had just been given by Mr. Nevinson 
and Mr. Brailsford — who both resigned from the staff 
of the leading Liberal paper on account of the policy 
adopted against the best interests of Woman. 

Mr. Brailsford's wife was, with Lady Constance Lyt- 
ton and others, "protesting" in the streets of New- 
castle on the night of October 9th, while Mr. Lloyd 
George talked Liberalism in the guarded hall. A good 
many women were arrested, and among them Lady Con- 
stance and Mrs. Brailsford. The authorities felt that 
to imprison and maltreat the wife of a Liberal journalist, 
and the sister of a peer, might be inconvenient. These 
ladies were released after two and a half days. There- 
upon inconvenient questions were asked in the House. 
The Home Secretary emphatically denied that either in- 
fluence with the press, or social position, had anything 
to do with letting these ladies off so lightly. They had 
been released, he assured the world, on " purely medical 
grounds." 

The other women, not being wives of well-known 
journalists, or sisters of peers, were detained in prison 
and forcibly fed. This was before the temper of the rank 
and file was hardened, and presumably these prisoners 
did not add to the misery of forcible feeding by violent 
resistance. 



136 WAY STATIONS 

Lady Constance Lytton knew quite well to what to 
attribute the fact that she was at liberty, whilst her com- 
panions and others who had joined them were being 
subjected to treatment which the authorities shrank from 
applying to Lord Lytton's sister. 

In January, 1910, Lady Constance determined to 
offer a test case in her own person. She cut off her hair, 
put on spectacles and working clothes, and led a party 
of women to the gates of the provincial prison where 
some of the Suffragettes were confined. She told the 
public what was being done to the women inside^ and de- 
manded their release. 

She was instantly arrested, and sentenced to fourteen 
days' hard labour. In prison she was forcibly stripped 
and dressed in prison clothes. When she had fasted 
for several days four wardresses entered her cell at the 
heels of the prison doctor. He did not so much as go 
through the form of testing that heart which had been 
an object of such solicitude in Newcastle Gaol, in the 
Home Office, and in the House of Commons. " Jane 
Warton," as the prisoner called herself, was bound and 
gagged. Under the disguise of the borrowed name, 
Lady Constance went through that " living nightmare of 
pain and horror and revolting degradation " — forcible 
feeding. 

In a few days' time the Gaol officials became convinced 
that this prisoner was not a working-woman, and probably 
not even Jane Warton; that she was, in any case, a 
woman suffering from grave heart trouble, and likely 
to die on their hands. So they allowed her to take out 
of prison a broken body, and such a case against the 
conduct of the business of the Home Office as made its 
chief think South Africa preferable to Westminster. 



THE HUNGER STRIKE 137 

Meanwhile the experiences of the Suffrage pris- 
oners were made known through the W.S.P.U. paper, 
" Votes for Women." Each arrest widened the little 
circle of enlightenment as to women's true position in 
the community. 

More and more of the better-off women were impelled 
to inquire into the foundation for the unshakable con- 
viction that lay underneath all this sacrifice. 

What was the reason some people were ready to endure 
so much for the sake of the right to choose the Nation's 
law-makers? What was amiss with the laws, the fortu- 
nate women began to ask? One lady, a member of the 
aristocracy, wrote to the papers to say that, for her part, 
she was quite pleased with things as they are. 

Some of the women who had least cause to be pleased 
with things as they are, were not in a position to venti- 
late their views. Others were called on to do this for 
them. 



WHY* 

1. Why are women of all classes in England band- 
ing themselves together to work for political en- 
franchisement? 

% Why have women subscribed in a little over a 
year, to one society alone (the Women's Social and 
Political Union), £50,000 to the Cause? 

3. Why will nurses, artists, librarians, writers, 
teachers, etc., give up congenial work to labour 
twice as hard, on half-pay or none, for the Suffrage ? 

4. Why do well-bred girls and older women sell 
Suffrage papers in the street — exposing themselves 
to the scant civility of the police and the Jiorseplay 
of rowdies? 

5. Why are they ready to accept the alienation 
of many of their friends and most of their menfolk? 

6. Why, instead of petitioning for justice, are 
the women now demanding it? 

7. Why, instead of helping to elect another 
"Member" to go to Parliament and support the 
Suffrage cause, are women going themselves in thou- 
sands " to knock at the door " of the House? 

* Published in Everybody's Magazine, Dec, 1909; in Votes 
for Women, London; and as a pamphlet by the Women 
Writers' Suffrage League. 

138 



WHY 139 

8. Why, rather than agree to abandon a danger- 
ous and often health-destroying agitation, have hun- 
dreds of women gone to prison? 

9. Why, if these are good tactics, were they not 
employed before? 

10. And why, after all, do women want the vote? 
These are among the questions I am told people 

ask. Yet, though I speak under correction, these 
are questions which I am convinced many persons 
do not wish to have answered. 

Not merely the idle and brainless, but many able 
and busy men ask only: How shall we silence 
these women? Instead of seeking information at the 
hands of experts ready with an answer — the medical 
women, the nurses, the Poor Law Guardians, the 
teachers, the district visitors, the University Set- 
tlement folk, women factory-inspectors, — when such 
applicants for the vote come forward with their 
evidence, what happens? Where they were for- 
merly given smooth speeches, they are now spared 
even that hypocrisy. They are told, in more or less 
direct terms, that the authorities do not want their 
evidence. 

I do not pretend to know how much longer the 
practice will be pursued of refusing a hearing to 
reputable, public-spirited experts, when these ex- 
perts * are guilty of being women. But I know that 

i Amongst others coming under this head, the Prime Min- 
ister has refused to receive a deputation of Women Doctors 
and another of Head-Schoolmistresses. 



140 WXY stations 

only one of the two main results of that refusal 
is clear to the man in the street. The result that is 
clear is : the stone through the window of the Govern- 
ment office. 

The other result — - not clear at all and well there- 
fore to point out — is of the same nature as that 
mischance which, it is whispered at London dinner- 
tables, recently befell the King. Among the relays 
of guests visiting His Majesty, was a small Princess 
whose beauty and liveliness brought upon her the 
special notice of her august host. She was given 
(at some purely domestic luncheon) the seat of hon- 
our. Far from feeling any proper embarrassment 
at her elevation, she made bold to converse at her 
ease. That slackening of the ancient order wherein 
so firmly, once, did sit the dread and fear of kings — 
this Zeit-Tendenz would seem to be apparent even in 
Royal Palaces. 

In the middle of an observation on the part of 
His Majesty, the small Princess made bold to in- 
terrupt. " When I am speaking," said the King, 
" you must be silent." The child, thereafter, sat 
obediently quiet 3 eating her meal. At last, the 
King, thinking he had been, perhaps, over-severe 
with his little kinswoman, patted her kindly on the 
shoulder: "Now we can listen \to you, my dear." 
" Oh, it is too late now," said the little Princess. 
" I was only going to tell you there was a cater- 
pillar in your salad. But you've eaten it." 

A similar experience awaits those who refuse the 



WHY 141 

testimony of the eager eyes, and clear practical 
brains, of " the women who know." But the result 
is at times even more serious. For the caterpillar 
is eaten not only by those in authority who decline 
to be warned. It is eaten by the innocent multi- 
tude who have had no chance of being warned. Our 
concern is mainly for them, rather than for the com- 
fortable minority so ready to be soothed by the 
Anti-Suffragist assurance that nought is amiss 
except with Suffragettes, and that behind the 
stone-throwing, behind the thousands of orderly 
meetings, behind the £50,000 is mere hysteria or 
hooliganism. The women who say that are not all 
so ignorant as they give themselves out. Many of 
them, rather than introduce inconvenient facts, 
rather than break through some small social conven- 
tion, will sit as still as the little Princess and see the 
caterpillar go down with the salad. These are the 
iC safe " tactics — warranted to ensure general ap- 
proval. 

Yet, I will assume that there are, as some think, 
persons willing to have unpalatable facts pointed 
out. I will answer seriatim the questions pro- 
pounded at the beginning of this paper, devoting 
the greater portion of my space to consideration of 
the first, which comprehends the last. 

1. To the initial question on the list (why women 
of all classes in England are banding themselves to- 
gether to work for political enfranchisement) there 
seem to be three answers. 



142 WAY STATIONS 

(a) Because women have discovered what men 
said they never would discover, namely: that the 
higher interests of all classes are the same, and that 
though the working-woman has the more patent and 
pressing need of this reform, the woman of the 
upper and middle classes has equal, if less obvious, 
need of it. 

(b) Thinking women have found that to work for 
the public good without working through the laws, 
is to salve one's soul with mere charity-mongering. 
It is to scratch at the surface instead of striking at 
the root of evil. 

(c) All sorts and conditions of women have come 
to realise that each class has urgent need of the sup- 
port of the others for the hastening of this reform. 

Now the reason the reform is urged with less 
unanimity and vigour in certain other countries, is 
because the need for it is less widely known by the 
women of those countries. Why is the need more 
widely known to English women? 

Because for two hundred years " the political 
woman " has been a factor in English social life. 2 

Because, earlier still, English women of the upper 
class inherited, and carried on, a tradition of the 

2 Scattered up and down the Biographies of public men, in 
the various collections of Letters and political memorabilia, is 
material for a highly significant book, setting forth the extent 
of the power exercised (in the bad old days of indirect influ- 
ence) by the political salon — swaying opinion as it undoubt- 
edly did, distributing patronage, making and unmaking men 
and ministries. 



WHY 143 

responsibility of the fortunate towards the less for- 
tunate. The attitude of the great lady and of the 
vicar's wife and daughters, has been imitated by 
those who wished to establish their credit in the com- 
munity. This survival of a feudal usage has its 
drawback in a tendency among the poor towards 
servility, and in a tendency among the rich towards 
condescension — but in that it brought some actual 
knowledge and a more human relationship between 
class and class, it is by so much wholesomer than 
indifference or blind antagonism, that it will prob- 
ably save England from the more violent encounters 
between the Rich and the Poor. The social revolu- 
tion here will come with less jar and bitterness be- 
cause the door of communication between the House 
of Have and the Hut of Have-Not has been kept 
open, not as in America, either irrevocably shut or 
open only to the menfolk of either camp. 

These two factors, then, knowledge of the forces 
at work and a feeling on the part of the upper-class 
woman that it was not permissible for her to stand 
altogether aloof — a feeling that, however much the 
times were changed, she was morally still under that 
old feudal obligation to look after the people about 
her who needed looking after — these formed the 
foundation upon which the present agitation is based 
among the more conservative English Suffragists. 

We must not forget that if the Woman Suffrage 
Movement owes its commanding proportions to the 
working-class woman, the needs and views of 



144 WAY STATIONS 

these women have been given their publicity and 
their collective weight through the organising power 
of educated women. The agitation will prove itself 
invincible in England because behind the formerly 
inarticulate army of the working-women have been 
these leaders who learned leadership quietly, slowly, 
through the decades that lie behind. For forty 
years, or more, women of some leisure and enlighten- 
ment have been serving on School Boards, as Poor 
Law Guardians, on Hospital and Organised Charity 
Boards, on Vestries. Largely then, because of this 
quiet work done in the past, a work that built up the 
will to serve at the same time that it brought wide- 
spread knowledge of women's disabilities, legal, in- 
dustrial, domestic — because having been made to 
realise the world's need of women in public affairs 
(as those of us without the English tradition* of 
responsibility yoked to practical experience have 
not realised it) — because, in brief, an immense num- 
ber of women in England know the answers to the 
questions set at the head of this article, therefore it 
is that, among the greater nations, England is lead- 
ing the world in intensity of interest in this 
reform. 

I have given as part of the answer to the first 
question on our list: women's discovery of the fu- 
tility of hoping to effect social amelioration without 
getting at the roots of evil. The roots of civic good 
or evil are the laws that govern the community. 
Now women in England are discouraged from hav- 



WHY 145 

ing any first-hand knowledge of law. If they want 
to know something of the foundations whereon civ- 
ilised life is built, they must go to men for informa- 
tion. This being so, men having said women shall 
have no share in framing, in administering, in in- 
terpreting, or in practising law, women might sup- 
pose men would be very careful to give the other sex 
a fair version of that knowledge open, in its fullness, 
only to men. Yet again and again men of intelli- 
gence and good repute have told us that the English 
law is fair to women. I have heard excellent-mean- 
ing men say the law showed women favouritism. 
They believed it — so blunted had become their sense 
of justice. Under examination, this " favouritism " 
they tell of, invariably turns out to be the mere rags 
of survival of the old chattel-view of women, laws 
like that of coverture - — not framed for the good 
of the wife, but for the convenience or greater 
safety of the husband, laws which a saner view of 
the sexes will annul. The legislator of the future 
will listen in vain to hear women's voices raised to 
advocate retention of these marks of " favourit- 
ism " upon the statute books. 

One may hope that men who honestly think the 
English law treats women so much as fairly, will 
read Lady McLaren's " Women's Charter." There 
are few people in England occupying a better post 
of vantage than Lady McLaren from which to 
write upon the subject. With reference to the laws 
of inheritance this authority says: 



146 WAY STATIONS 

"As women devote so much of their time to the 
unpaid work of rearing children, it appears natural 
that special provision should be made for them out 
of the inherited wealth of the country. So far from 
this being the case, we find that it is the man who 
takes the greater share of the inherited property, 
although he is able to work for himself during the 
best years of his life. 55 

Lady McLaren speaks of " the strangely penni- 
less condition of Englishwomen, though they are 
citizens of the richest nation in the world. 55 She 
contrasts the French custom of providing the daugh- 
ter with a dot, thereby enabling her " to become a 
partner in marriage instead of a dependent. 55 

But not from all men do we hear the " favourit- 
ism, 55 or even the common fairness, of the English 
law maintained. In his text-book on English Law the 
eminent Jurist and Anti-SufFragist, Prof. Dicey, 
says with praiseworthy frankness : " The four 
Married Women's Property Acts are a record of 
the hesitation and dullness of Members of Parlia- 
ment. 55 He speaks of " recurring blunders which 
one may hope without any great confidence have 
been at last corrected. 55 

" When the present Divorce Act was enacted, 55 
says Lady McLaren, " Mr. Gladstone himself de- 
clared it to be ' a gross injustice to women in favour 
of men, 5 and it would have been impossible to pass 
such a measure into law had the views of women 
been represented in the House of Commons. 55 The 



WHY 147 

lawyer from one of whose printed books I take some 
of my facts 3 says with regard to the laws of in- 
heritance as affecting women: 

" The conduct of most Englishmen in this respect 
is nothing short of disgraceful. In France it is 
quite usual for one brother to take the land and to 
pay out the other members of the family. Each gets 
his or her share equally, whether they are sons or 
daughters. But in case the land has to be divided 
each still gets his or her share. This not only puts 
Frenchwomen in a better position as wives and moth- 
ers than any Englishwomen, except in the rare case 
of an only daughter of a rich man ; but it also gives 
them an interest in agriculture, and business, which 
is hardly to be found among Englishwomen. It 
further carries with it a respect towards women by 
the men of their own class, which is equally rare 
here." 

We find, on looking further into the " favourit- 
ism " shown women by the law, facts such as these : 

" An unmarried woman who has money, or can 
make it, can live her own life, see her own friends 
and act like a free and responsible being, but with 
regard to a married woman the law still holds that 
she is ' under the control and custody of her hus- 

3 Ralph Thicknesse, author of " A Digest of the Law of 
Husband and Wife," "The Rights and Wrongs of Women;' 
etc. 



148 WAY STATIONS 

band ' ; * She is under his guardianship, and he is 
entitled to prevent her from indiscriminate inter- 
course with the world,' She must bring up his 
children as he pleases, the fact that they are her 
children does not count." 

The wife cannot legally compel the husband to 
provide for her or the children out of his wages so 
long as husband and wife are living together. She 
has no means except persuasion to get even a part 
of her husband's earnings. 

" It is sometimes said that a man is legally bound 
to provide for his wife and children, but this is mis- 
leading " (says Mr. Thicknesse, sometime of Lin- 
coln's Inn). "It becomes true only if wife and 
children go to the workhouse." (Note that this 
provision is not for the relief of the women, but for 
the relief of the State.) "If she has friends, she 
may get temporary shelter, and apply to the magis- 
trate for a separation order. Even here injustice 
follows her." 

" In England " [says this lawyer] " property 
comes before everything." 

" The income of the married pair must be added 
together for the purposes of income tax, unless they 
are living separately" [a premium on disunion]. 

" The incomes of a man and a woman, unmarried, 
living together, are taxed separately " [a premium 
on illegal relations]. 



WHY 



149 



As Mr. Thicknesse says: 

" The husband not infrequently has spent the dead, 
first wife's money on a second wife, and on children of 
a second marriage, depriving the children of the first 
marriage of it either partially or entirely." 

A man can not only will his property away from his 
wife, and leave her penniless — he can even will his prop- 
erty away from his children, and leave them penniless 
charges upon a penniless widow. 

In the absence of a will or settlement a woman, mar- 
ried or single, can inherit land only if she has neither 
father nor brother living. 

For instance: 



A married man owning 
freehold land and leaving 
issue, dies intestate. The 
widow has the use of one- 
third of this freehold prop- 
erty during her lifetime. 
Neither she nor any of the 
children inherit a foot of 
the freehold property out- 
right, except the eldest 
son, who gets it all. 



A married woman own- 
ing freehold land dies in- 
testate. Her husband has 
the use and profit of all of 
the land during his life- 
time^ and after his death 
the eldest son gets all the 
land, the other children get 
none. 

A woman's father own- 
ing land dies intestate. 
Her brother takes all the 
land, she gets none. 

A woman's brother own- 
ing land dies intestate. If 
their father is alive he gets 
all the land. 

A woman's sister owning 



150 



WAY STATIONS 



If a man owning per- land dies intestate. Their 
sonal or real estate dies father takes all the land, 
intestate, and childless, his the surviving sister gets 
widow gets of her hus- none, 
band's property the value 
of £500, and the use of 
one-third of his freehold 
property for the remainder 
of her life. 

If a man dies intestate 
the widow has in his estate 
only a third interest, if 
there are children. If 
there are no children she 
has a half interest. In 
default of next of kin the 
other half of the husband's 
property reverts to the 
Crown. 

One of the most iniquitous of all these provisions is 
the following: 

In the case of the death 
of a son or a daughter, the 
mother inherits nothing 
from either. The whole 
of their property, even if 
it has come from the 
mother's family, goes to 
the father or to the father's 
next of kin. 

("Women's Charter," p. 
20.) 



If a woman dies intes- 
tate her husband takes all 
her personal property and 
has an unqualified right to 
administer and manage it. 
Neither her children nor 
her relations from whom 
she may have got this per- 
sonal property can get any 
part of it. 



WHY 151 

Lady McLaren suggests that among reforms by 
the way, that of the Church Marriage Service should 
not be forgotten. This service was drawn up and 
sanctioned by Parliamentary authority in the Act of 
Uniformity, and is under the direct control of Par- 
liament, It postulates the inferiority of women, 
and commands the woman to submit to her husband 
in all things as the Church submits to God. It 
obliges her to take a vow of obedience to her husband 
which neither the Roman Catholic nor the Noncon- 
formist bodies impose on her. " It commits the 
husband to the entirely false declaration that he 
endows his wife with all his worldly goods, when he 
usually neither does, nor intends to do, anything of 
the kind." 

Many women, and I do not doubt men as well, 
have felt that the service abounds in expressions 
suited only to a more primitive age. A very proper 
suggestion has been made that the House of Commons 
should require the Bishops in Convocation to draw 
up a new service which would be in accordance both 
with womanly dignity and with legal truth. 

In that home which woman is told is her " sphere " 
(where she is to " rule as queen ") she has not only 
no control over any portion of the means of liveli- 
hood (unless she owns or earns it herself), nor con- 
trol even over the material contents of her house — 
she has no legal right in her own children unless 
(significant exception) they are born out of wed- 
lock. The children's mother has no legal right to 



152 WAY STATIONS 

a voice in deciding how they shall be nursed ; how or 
where educated ; what trade or profession they shall 
adopt; in what form of religion they shall be in- 
structed. 

For instance : 

A devoted Churchwoman loses her husband when 
her children are young. He has never expressed any 
opinion as to the children's religious education. His 
family are militant Nonconformists. After the man's 
death, his family are legally justified in assuming the 
religious up-bringing of the children, since the dead 
father in his youth had been a member of the grand- 
parents 5 particular sect and had not publicly broken 
with it. The strong convictions of the mother go 
for nothing. 

Another instance: A woman studies medicine. 
She becomes a convinced homoeopathist. Her hus- 
band, a stockbroker, insists on subjecting his chil- 
dren to the rigour of old-fashioned allopathy. The 
mother must stand and look on, helpless, while the 
children she is responsible for bringing into the 
world are treated after a fashion she and many others 
believe to be pernicious. 

If a father wants his child vaccinated, or if he is 
merely indifferent, and so does not lay an objection 
before the magistrate, the mother cannot prevent 
the child's being vaccinated. If the father wishes 
the child to be left unvaccinated* the mother cannot 
legally have it done. 

A Custody of Children's Act was passed in 1891. 



WHY 153 

It enables the parent to get back a child from the 
hands of a third person, but it is only the child's 
father who can use this law. 

" There is no branch of English law," says Lady 
McLaren, " which more urgently needs attention 
than that relating to the guardianship of chil- 
dren — " and not because men have never had their 
attention called to the abuses which deface that law. 

" The late Sir Horace Davey introduced a Bill 
which proposed that father and mother should be 
acknowledged equal guardians of their children. 
This just and logical reform secured only nineteen 
votes in the House of Commons. The father re- 
mains sole guardian. Even when he is dead he may 
still, by having taken the precaution to appoint a 
guardian, be able to override the wishes of the chil- 
dren's living mother." 

She cannot, even if she is a widow, appoint anyone 
to act for her children after her death, if her hus- 
band has already appointed a guardian. 

The mother may by deed, or will, provisionally 
appoint a guardian to act jointly with the father 
after her death. If the Court is satisfied that the 
father is not fitted to act as sole guardian, it may 
confirm the appointment. 

This last wears an air of quasi- justice, but, like 
all other laws, it must be interpreted and applied by 



154 WAY STATIONS 

one sex only, by the sex to whom the father's inter- 
ests are those that make, inevitably, their surest 
appeal. 

I will give one instance as to how it may work out. 
A woman, not poor and obscure, but well known in 
English society, married a man who soon tired of 
her and transferred his attentions to a rival. I can- 
not remember now whether he openly went off witE 
No. 2, but I know that after a series of humiliations 
and heart-breaking experiences which were the com- 
mon talk of their world, the neglected wife was glad 
to give up the father of her child to the secon3 
woman, and to live alone, devoting herself to the 
education of her little girl, the only child of the 
marriage. 

After a few years the deserted wife died. She 
had appointed a brother or sister, I forget which, as 
guardian to the child, then about ten years old. The 
husband promptly married his mistress, who was a 
woman of good birth. The man, rich, influential, be- 
longing to a well-known family, was forgiven his pec- 
cadillos, but people hesitated for a while to accept 
the new wife. She, however, had set her heart on 
social recognition. The little girl, she saw, was a 
possible means of rehabilitation. She induced the 
father to demand the custody of the child. There 
was an action at law ; the Court set aside the provi- 
sion of the mother, took the child from its guardian, 
and gave it into the keeping of the woman who had 
wrecked the dead mother's life. The second wife 



WHY 155 

went about parading her devotion to the child, using 
her as a stalking-horse. The device failed by reason 
of the undisguised antipathy of the little girl for 
her dead mother's enemy. Nothing would induce her 
to play up. She was silent and sullen. The second 
wife presently decided that the unhappy little crea- 
ture was " queer." Oh, but very queer indeed not 
to be gay, and lively and affectionate with so de- 
sirable a stepmother! As the child continued to 
mope and pine, the second wife Wearied of her bar- 
gain. She was a resourceful lady. She started the 
theory that the child was mentally deficient. To 
make a long and hideous story short, the woman 
prevailed upon the father (who was as much as ever 
under her influence) to put his child into an idiot 
asylum. The girl was there for several years. She 
must have been blessed with uncommonly steady wits, 
for, in spite of the peril of such associations, she 
developed no sign of mental lesion. " Paying Pa- 
tient " as she was, the asylum authorities by and by 
refused to keep her any longer, since after the care- 
ful surveillance of years they failed to discover any- 
thing whatever amiss. They announced to the father 
their conclusion that the child ought never to have 
been placed in the asylum, and she was accordingly 
sent home. Whereupon the stepmother promptly 
packed her off to school. Now the end of this nar- 
rative ought to be that the girl was permanently 
injured by her ghastly experience at the asylum. 
She happened to be of more enduring stuff. At 



156 WAY STATIONS 

school she rapidly made up for lost time and dis- 
tinguished herself in two widely different directions : 
by carrying off school prizes ; and, as a fellow-pupil 
has reported, by ministering to the gaiety of the 
institution. In any dull moment : " Show us what 
the idiots did,' 5 her schoolfellows would say. And 
this astounding young person, of a surely unshak- 
able mental equilibrium, would oblige amid peals of 
laughter. 

But if the laws bear hardly on the women of 
education and means, do they deal more mercifully 
with those obviously more in need of championship 
— with the ignorant and the poor? Certainly many 
of the reasons, legal and other, that actuate women 
of property to demand a voice in equalising the laws, 
are different from the reasons that actuate the hard- 
driven working-woman. But, coming to the matter 
as those two classes do, from different points of the 
social compass and finding, as they most indubitably 
have found, a common meeting-point — they are seen 
to stand there shoulder to shoulder crying : " Votes 
for Women ! " 

We will examine some of the facts (I take them 
almost at random) which have brought the working- 
woman to the point of revolt. 

Broadly speaking, the fact mainly responsible (as 
has often been pointed out) is the intrusion of the 
spirit of commercial exploitation into the woman's 
sphere. Many of the people who cry loudest, 
" Woman's sphere is the home," are men who draw 



WHY 157 

their revenues and derive their power from this inva- 
sion of what they call Woman's Sphere. They are 
owners or shareholders in mills and factories where 
the age-old work of women, spinning, weaving, bak- 
ing, brewing, soap and candle-making, etc., is done 
on a scale so vast and so sadly cheap that the world 
is flooded with shoddy wares and the beautiful handi- 
crafts have died. What of the women who have 
been taken away from their homes in tens of thou- 
sands to mind machinery in the sacred cause of 
commerce? There is a satisfying fitness in the 
fact that it is the modern representatives of those 
dispossessed women who form the largest and most 
powerful group of organised women demanding the 
vote to-day. Capable of improvement as their con- 
dition is, they, nevertheless, get higher wages, better 
environment in labour, they boast a higher standard 
of home comfort, and more generous provision for 
their children and their ow T n old age, than any other 
group of working-women. 

Now, no one denies that thousands of women out- 
side the textile trades are working without let or 
hindrance for a starvation wage. Sweated labour 
is not only permitted, but even (as will be shown) 
is encouraged by the Government. Thousands of 
destitute women-workers are forced into the ranks 
of the unemployed, and are mercilessly neglected by 
the authorities, while those same authorities invent 
emergency work for unemployed men. The curious 
and instructive thing is that, with all the difficulty 



158 WAY STATIONS 

women encounter in getting decently paid work, 
when women have got it, the Government in the 
person of its President of the Local Government 
Board advocates taking this well-paid textile work 
away from women and giving it to men. It is pro- 
posed that married women-workers (a great propor- 
tion are married) be compelled to stay at home. 
No question of asking the women what they think 
about this proposal. But what they think about it 
may be inferred from the fact that the threat of 
interference with the right to work has given us 
96,000 Suffragists. The manifesto of the Lanca- 
shire Textile Workers says: 

" The position of the unenfranchised working- 
women, who are by their voteless condition shut out 
from all political influence, is daily becoming more 
precarious. They cannot hope to hold their own in 
industrial matters where their interests may clash 
with those of their enfranchised fellow-workers or 
employers. The one all-absorbing and vital political 
question for labouring women is to force an entrance 
into the ranks of responsible citizens, in whose hands 
lies the solution of the problems which are at present 
convulsing the industrial world," etc., etc. 

A friend of mine fell into talk with a tidy, con- 
tented-looking mill-woman of thirty-odd in a tram- 
car the other day. The woman spoke of her home 
with pride. " It doesn't suffer, then, by your being 



WHY 159 

so mucn away? " " Oh, no, I have a housekeeper." 
At my friend's evident surprise she explained : " . . . 
a nice oldish body who isn't up to mill-work, but keeps 
the house and children as neat as a pin." " Chil- 
dren? You think it's good for them that their 
mother should be so much away? " " They're away 
themselves a good bit. They go to school. But it 
is good for them that my thirty shillings a week 
makes us able to feed and clothe them decent. And 
it's good for the housekeeper-body, who hasn't a 
home of her own, to have mine to work in and earn 
her bread honest." To have heard that woman's 
views on the proposed restriction of women's work 
might have opened the eyes of legislators. " What 
will you do," asked my friend, " if Mr. John Burns 
carries out his scheme?" "Eh," said the woman, 
" if he does that, I suppose we'll have to clem " 
(starve). 

But the textile workers though, as we have seen, 
their privileges are threatened, form the aristocracy 
of industry. What of the others, the women who 
work in sweat shops, and the home-workers? Let 
us ask Elizabeth O'Brien. Not as one of the worst 
off. Mrs. O'Brien is not a fur-picker, with little 
food to put in her stomach, and plenty of fluff to put 
in her lungs ; not a dipping-house assistant at the 
potteries, losing her eyesight, suffering from finger- 
drop, and having " since working in the lead, one 
stillborn child and six miscarriages." 4 Elizabeth 
4 See James Haslam: August "Gentlewoman." 



160 WAY STATIONS 

O'Brien is a tailoress, aged fifty-six, maker of uni- 
forms for the grand new Territorial Army. It is a 
mere chance that we are able to elicit Mrs. O'Brien's 
views, for the other day she threw herself off Lam- 
beth Bridge into the Thames. She was rescued and 
brought up in Westminster Police Court. It was 
found that her husband had been dead nine months, 
and that, working with might and main at clothing 
the British Army, she could not keep herself alive 
and pay room-rent at 2s. 6d. a week. The Police 
Court Missionary, Mr. Barnett, upon careful in- 
vestigation of the woman's story, added his evidence 
later. He had found that the would-be suicide was 
a highly respectable woman. She did her tailoring 
at Messrs. Dolan's, clothing contractors, ten and a 
half hours a day, from eight in the morning till 
eight at night, with intervals for meals — and she 
earned less than a shilling a day. Upon inquiry at 
Dolan's, the Police Court Missionary was told she 
was rather a slow worker (strange at fifty-six!), 
and therefore it was that she earned at most 6s. a 
week, and often only 4s., 3s., or even 2s. at basting 
and finishing police trousers at 8%d., and a farthing 
a pair for putting foot-straps on cavalry overalls. 
This was agreed to be hard work for an elderly 
woman, since it necessitated the use of an awl. For 
doing the various kinds of sewing upon a pair of 
" Territorial " breeches, Messrs. Dolan paid 8d. No 
woman, it was admitted, could make two pairs in a 
day. The magistrate said : " It is obvious it means 



WHY 161 

starvation unless the woman is helped. 55 He told 
Mrs. O'Brien to " keep a good heart. We will see 
what we can do for you. 55 One would not suggest 
that the magistrate did not keep his word. The 
point is that hundreds of such cases are never heard 
of. This one happened to come before the public. 
Mrs. 5 Brien 5 s employers (not the real ones in high 
office, but the middlemen, Messrs. Dolan) were made 
to feel a little uncomfortable. They sent their so- 
licitor to make a public statement before a magis- 
trate. The firm desired to emphasise the fact that 
the whole of this trouble (which was one of much 
public importance) was due to the prices at which 
contractors are compelled by the force of competi- 
tion to take Government work. If the Government 
were to insist on the rate of wages being standard- 
ised (" as undoubtedly they should, 55 said Messrs. 
Dolan's representative), this system of cutting 
down prices to the lowest fraction would be at an 
end. 

There is one public body to-day, the London 
County Council, which insists upon a standardised 
rate for tailoring, and the workers on their uniforms 
do not complain and are said to have no reason to. 
According to the Police Court Missionary, further 
investigation deepened rather than mitigated the 
tragedy of the case of this woman, who was em- 
ployed on Government work at a wage insufficient 
to keep her alive, though she was hard at it from 
eight in the morning till eight at night. Here was 



162 WAY STATIONS 

a woman, nearing sixty, who had lived without re- 
proach. Besides giving the State good service and 
trousers at 8d. a pair, she had given the country 
a man to wear them — • her only son, a private in the 
2nd Dragoon Guards bearing a good character. 

What had the State done for the woman? 

What the State proposes to do for another woman, 
whose case came to light about the same time, is to 
take out of her life its one redeeming element. This 
woman was the wife of an excellent man who had 
been trying in vain for five months to get work. 
During part of the time the womaii had the good 
fortune to be given a job at Pink's jam factory. 
This sole piece of luck (which is the part of the 
story which the Government proposes to eliminate) 
enabled her, while it lasted, to support her husband 
and seven children. She told the Court she did not 
know what would have happened but for that job. 
Yet she had found out what could happen when the 
job failed. Her husband had to get money somehow 
to keep the family from starvation. Some men 
would have stolen it. This man got it from a money- 
lender. But so far as the outward result went, he 
might as well have stolen it. On account of this 
debt of 28s. he was haled off to prison. 

Many women of the miscalled educated class 
probably think that imprisonment for debt was 
abolished at the same time as the old Marshalsea 
Prison. But in this, as in so many other practical 
matters, our less fortunate sisters could better our 



WHY 168 

instruction. This mother of seven, for instance, 
who for the lack of 28s. saw her " Woman's king- 
dom " lost and her children fatherless and hungry. 
"How much money have you now?" the judge 
asked. " Nothing." " Not a shilling in the 
world? " " Not a penny." The judge gave her 6d. 
and sent for the money-lender. When the judge had 
heard all the evidence he ordered the debtor's dis- 
charge. He then asked the woman, " Have you the 
means to go and fetch your husband from the gaol? " 
" I have only the 6d. you gave me, sir," said the 
woman. "Have you had no food, then? I gave 
it to you for that." " I kept it till we could have it 
all together, sir. There are seven little ones." 

The temper of this judge chanced not to be un- 
kindly. But, inadequate as 6d. may be to retrieve 
the ruined fortunes of nine people, not all judges 
have even 6d. worth of humanity to offer the women 
who come before them. 

Those who would like to believe that administra- 
tors of the law can be trusted to show consideration 
to women should take counsel with Mrs. A. of Chel- 
sea. She is the wife of a mechanic. This man ill- 
treats his wife to the extent that she goes in fear of 
her life. She took her little boys the other day to 
the police-court and applied for a separation order. 
The magistrate told h or to " go home and do the 
best she could." The children, who had seen the 
indignities, and the physical danger, to which their 
mother was subjected by their father, received in 



164 WAY STATIONS 

the police-court a further lesson in the duties of men 
towards women. They heard this symbol of justice 
and of ultimate power, the awe-inspiring magistrate, 
tell their mother that she had not yet suffered 
sufficient injury at the hands of her husband to 
have earned the right to live away from him. The 
learned opinion was that " a man was entitled to 
knock his wife about a bit." Whether the magis- 
trate was shameless enough to use some such words, 
or whether he merely conveyed to the woman in more 
guarded terms his view of the husbandly prerogative, 
the effect upon his audience was the same. The law 
allowed men this privilege. Indeed, that the law 
should do so excited little surprise in the minds of 
persons belonging to a class familiarised with the 
petty fines imposed upon notorious wife-beaters, and 
the frequently proved fact that it is legally a more 
reprehensible act to steal a loaf to feed your starv- 
ing family than to give the mother of that family 
a pair of black eyes. 5 If we who have books and 
leisure consult the authorities, we find that assault 
upon a wife is punishable by fine or imprisonment. 
Yet in practice an ill-used woman, ignorant and 
unrepresented, finds magistrates in agreement to 

s Not a week passes but terrible cases of this kind come 
before the police-courts. For years the newspaper "Truth" 
(not prejudiced in favour of women's equality before the law, 
since it is conducted by an Anti-Suffragist of many years 
standing, Mr. Henry Labouchere) has pointed out the absurd 
inadequacy of the sentences passed even in the aggravated 
cases of such assault, 



WHY 165 

send her " home " (!) to her husband, to " do the 
best you can." 

But to be beaten without redress, and even with- 
out hope of future legal protection, that is not the 
worst that may come of this " best " which is all the 
law may have to offer. 

Of the women who have sorry cause to know that, 
is the wife of a day-labourer living not two miles 
from Westminster. Mrs. B. was another of these 
applicants for a separation order (since divorce is 
too dear a luxury for any of this class). The 
ground of Mrs. B.'s plea is the infidelity of her hus- 
band. " You can't get a separation order for that." 
" Well, but he brings the woman home — he keeps 
her in the house." " That is no ground." Then 
the magistrate is given the heart of the grievance. 
The husband insists on having the interloper in his 
wife's bedroom. No redress. Because the husband 
had not turned the wife out, because he professed 
himself willing to support her, the supplanted wife 
(not only ready, eager to leave him with her rival) 
was refused a separation order. She is coerced into 
accepting the degrading conditions laid down by 
the man inside her home, because the men outside 
(represented by the magistrate) say these degrading 
conditions are just and legal. At every crisis in 
her life she finds the law invading that sphere where 
woman is told she reigns supreme. 

Those legislators, who propose to make it illegal 
for married women to work outside their homes, do 



166 WAY STATIONS 

not even begin by doing away with the age-old legal 
abuses which any day may make a woman's home 
the worst place for her on the surface of the earth. 
If a woman of the kind whose story I have just 
told is still young enough and strong enough, just 
one way of escape is opened to her this side of death. 
For that woman (and many another) there is nothing 
between her and moral degradation except the chance 
to earn her own living and thereby the right to sleep 
in an undefiled bed. If this woman has a daughter 
or the ear of any young woman, who can suppose 
she will not urge the girl to get, and to hold fast, 
some means of livelihood other than, or in addition 
to, the profession of wife? If she does not, the 
reason will be that her experience has left her either 
brutalised or cowed. 

The census of eight years ago put the number of 
women working in trades for weekly wages at nearly 
four million. As Lady McLaren says, there is rea- 
son to suppose that this is much under the true 
figure, since many women still consider it more gen- 
teel to describe themselves as unoccupied, or as mar- 
ried women only. 

A proof of the mortal need women feel of eco- 
nomic independence is found in the fact that against 
natural inclination and iron-bound tradition, more 
and more women leave their homes in search of work, 
in spite of the stumbling-blocks placed in their way, 
and in spite of the unfair discrimination made against 



WHY 167 

women's work merely because it is done by a prac- 
tically slave class. 

In no department of human action have we found 
more plainly manifest the law that the evil growing 
out of injustice ultimately rebounds upon the doer 
— than in this of discrimination against women's 
work because it is not done by men. Men have lost 
through this discrimination far more than they could 
realise, because the discrimination was supposed to 
be in their favour. To-day, though they still insist 
on the maintenance of the principle that women 
should be paid less than men for precisely the same 
service, they begin to realise that this rule does not 
always operate in favour of men. They are crying 
out — not against its injustice, but against its more 
palpable immediate ill-effect upon themselves. 

During a recent by-election in the North of Eng- 
land I first came face to face with the bitter feeling 
on the part of the working-man against his under- 
paid rival, the working-woman. A strike of the 
Amalgamated Society of Engineers had been in 
progress for many weeks. As is well known, these 
north-country engineers are among the most intelli- 
gent and highest-paid workmen in the kingdom. To 
get them to vote in the way best calculated to serve 
the women's cause was an end worth striving for. 
The Government might ignore voteless women. The 
Government could not so well afford to ignore this 
body of highly organised working-men armed with 



168 WAY STATIONS 

electoral power. Naturally, therefore, the President 
of the Women's Social anct Political Union accepted 
gladly the first invitation ever given a woman to come 
and address a branch of the Amalgamated Society 
of Engineers. 

The meeting (held in a large room over a bar) was 
packed with working-men. No one making her way 
through the crowd could doubt that this opportunity 
to present the women's point of view was in the 
nature of a fluke. The resolution had presumably 
been passed when only a few of the men were present. 
The majority would never have agreed to it. The 
majority were present now to register their disap- 
proval. I have never been at an indoor gathering 
where I felt the atmosphere more distinctly hostile. 
The chairman made a speech that was half apology, 
and begged for fair play. Mrs. Pankhurst rose to 
talk to men whose anxious thoughts had been con- 
centrated for weeks upon their own bitter struggle, 
to men who knew nothing of the woman's movement. 
I noticed how many of the workmen never so much 
as looked towards the woman standing there in the 
cloud of tobacco smoke and talking so quietly. I saw 
how, little by little, whispering, grumbling groups 
dissolved, unwilling eyes were turned upon the 
speaker and the pipes went out. These men were at 
least listening. Fo^ the speaker was not talking to 
them about Votes for Women, but about the men's im- 
mediate problem, talking as a fellow-citizen, one who 
had studied politics and for thirty years had worked 



WHY 169 

with men for public ends. Although non-party and 
refusing to " take sides," she plainly knew more 
about the grounds of the great strike than many of 
the professed politicians who came from Westminster 
to instruct these men. She had their attention in 
that vice that never lets go till the last word falls. 

Even the big man with the hunched shoulders, who 
had sat with averted eyes — slowly he was turning 
his grizzled head. I was glad of that till I saw the 
look in his face. The speaker had summed up the 
situation — -" and so after all these weeks you are 
still idle." 

" We are idle," said the grizzled engineer, " but 
our machines are not." There was a second's hush. 
" There are women behind them" he said. Like low 
thunder the muttering of the displaced men went 
through the room. 

The speaker's face grew bright. It was precisely 
the opening she wanted. " And if women are sitting 
at your machines, whose fault is it? You are quick 
to blame the women. Who of you blame the men 
with full stomachs who employ those hungry women 
as strike-breakers? Who of you blame the people 
most to blame of all? The husbands, fathers, 
brothers of those women, who have kept them ig- 
norant and unorganised. I think myself women can 
do more suitable work than make screws and polish 
brass-fittings. But I am glad those women are do- 
ing your work on half-pay!" There was some dis- 
turbance upon that, but her practised voice rose 



170 WAY STATIONS 

over it : " It is the only thing, perhaps, those women 
can do that will bring their difficulties home to men. 
Of course the state of things is evil. But you have 
the remedy, and you won't apply it. Men shut 
women out of their Unions, and yet expect women 
to starve for the sake of those Unions. You and 
your fathers have accepted the tradition that women 
of your own class shall be overworked and underpaid. 
Then you dare complain that women are overworked 
and underpaid. Whose fault is it that women don't 
play the game? Yours ! — - who refuse to allow them 
to learn it." She hammered the truth into them red- 
hot. But what frightened them most, I think, was her 
showing how, for all that men could do, the woman- 
worker was forcing her way into one industry after 
another. And in truth, consideration of the sta- 
tistics of displacement of men by women is a sobering 
exercise. Yet, as the speaker pointed out, men who 
have all fields open to them have not scrupled to 
take away women's work. "Not only do men bake 
and brew, they even knit and spin, 6 they sell lace 
and ribbons, they dress women's hair. What work 
have they left women? The unpaid drudgery of 
the house ; the work in sweat shops that men despise. 
But women are growing tired of this division of 

e " I saw a man working a special knitting machine, earning 
£3 a week. He was waited on by a woman who earned 10s. 
a week. I asked the manager if the woman could not do the 
work at the knitting machine as well as the man? He said, 
'Every bit as well; but the Trade Union rules will not allow 
it.'"— Lady McLaren in "The Woman's Charter." 



WHY 171 

labour. Not only amongst you here — everywhere." 
She showed how by ignoring the working-woman the 
working-man was cutting his own throat. " Many 
of those women at your machines would rather work 
at home. They can't afford to. Some of those 
women would rather set type or bind books. But 
these are skilled trades and highly paid. The Unions 
won't let women learn them. Nearly all technical 
training in this country is for boys. Women have 
to creep in wherever your misfortunes make an open- 
ing." " That's it ! " somebody said at the back. 
" Your woman's a born blackleg ! " " She's born no 
different from you, my friend, except that she will 
sooner sacrifice herself to feed the children. In in- 
dustry she stands where your fathers stood before 
they learned co-operation. You men have got every 
good thing you possess by standing together. Now 
I've come to tell you - — we women want to stand to- 
gether. And we want you to help us. If you won't 
do it for the sake of justice, do it for the sake of 
your own bread and butter. If any man in this 
room ought to be in favour of Woman Suffrage it 
should be my friend, there, who is so angry at the 
thought of a woman working his machine for half- 
pay." 

It was the first time the Suffrage had been men- 
tioned. 

She showed them what good reason even the few 
organised working-women had to know that political 
freedom must precede fair industrial conditions, and 



172 WAY STATIONS 

how hard the textile workers found the task of pre- 
venting unrepresented labour from being cheapened. 
This was not a problem rising here and there out of 
a strike - — but the constant unending struggle, 
" Your only safety lies where our only safety lies : 
In equal pay for equal work." 

It was a doctrine that pleased the engineers well. 
If women had to be paid the same, what employer 
in the iron trade wouldn't prefer an Amalgamated 
Engineer to a woman! Readily enough, now, they 
listened to what half an hour before would have 
fallen on deaf ears. They even applauded the senti- 
ment : " You will never be safe, you will never your- 
selves be free till women are free. Only the enemies 
of your freedom are served by your refusing to 
stand by us in this struggle." She told them of the 
pains and penalties inflicted upon Suffragists. She 
spoke of her own prison experience. The men near 
the grizzled engineer seemed to be consulting with 
him. At the close of the meeting the big man stood 
up and said gruffly that if the lady wanted stewards 
at her Town Hall meeting, he, and, as he understood, 
about twenty-seven of his mates were ready to 
" steward " for her and see fair play. 

The Amalgamated Engineers were as good as 
their word. 

Afterwards came other requests asking that other 
branches should be addressed. I saw much the same 
scene enacted over and over, the initial hostility 



WHY 173 

giving way to interest and in the end to champion- 
ship. 

The Government lost that by-election. 

The entrance of women into industry naturally 
brings with it a share in the mischances of industrial 
life. The Minority Report of the Poor Law Com- 
mission says: 

" The difficulties created by the seasonal fluctua- 
tions in the volume of the employment in nearly all 
the manufacturing industries in which women are 
engaged, are increased by the extremely low rates of 
remuneration for women's work of this kind ! " 

The question of unemployment opens up too many 
avenues of investigation, and is far too complex to 
be entered upon here. But the results of unemploy- 
ment are surely as palpable when thejr appear in 
woman as when they appear in man. Chivalry aside, 
there would seem to be obvious reasons why a half- 
starved woman should be relieved at least as readily 
as a half-starved man. Yet that, as we in London 
know, is not the view of the Local Government 
Board. 

Even in the mill districts, where in the staple in- 
dustry of the place women-workers predominate, 
£50,000 was voted by men for relief of men last 
autumn. How much did they vote should be set 
aside for unemployed women? Not a shilling. 

But this and kindred evils tend constantly to be 



174 WAY STATIONS 

rectified, we are told. Why won't women be patient 
and leave the further betterment to time? 

Those who ask that are people who have no faculty 
for making real to themselves, for so much as ten 
minutes, the misery that envelops others for all their 
lives. Nor do those stolid persons know what has 
been the result of leaving reform to some day other 
than our own. To do so is as rational as for the 
Christian to leave the salvation of his soul for his 
descendants to attend to. The people in direst need 
of this reform are mortal. While we delay and 
argue they suffer and die. But that is not the last 
of them. They leave to the world a legacy in the 
children of evil conditions. 

Now, these children have the honour, the very ex- 
istence of the country in their keeping. These chil- 
dren are the real problem. What about the children? 

Mrs. Barnett, wife of Canon Barnett, so long 
of Toynbee Hall, says: 

" The annals of the police-courts, the experience 
of the attendance officers of the London County 
Council, the reports of the National Society for Pre- 
vention of Cruelty to Children, the accounts of the 
vast young army in truant and industrial schools, the 
stories of the Waifs and Strays Society and Dr. 
Barnardo's organisation are hideously eloquent of 
the cruelty, the neglect, and the criminality of thou- 
sands of parents." 



WHY 175 

To penetrate the homes of the poor and ignorant, 
where so large a proportion of the children are 
growing up, is a task difficult if not impossible. 
As long as the parents can support their children 
(in however ill a fashion), they cannot, as society 
is at present constituted, be interfered with. 

But what of the children who are under State 
control? How does the Government avail itself of 
its free hand in dealing with the 234,792 children 
wholly or partially dependent on the State, accord- 
ing to the Local Government Board's own return in 
January, 1908? 

The answer to that question is not a pleasant 
thing to contemplate even on paper. The State 
keeps 22,483 of these children in workhouses. Here 
is a description of a Government nursery — 

" often found under the charge of a person 



actually certified as of unsound mind, the bottles 
sour, the babies wet, cold, and dirty. The Com- 
mission on the Care and Control of the Feeble- 
minded draws attention to an episode in connection 
with one feeble-minded woman who was set to wash 
a baby ; she did so in boiling water, and it died.' 5 

But, as Mrs. Barnett points out, this state of af- 
fairs is no new discovery. A dozen years ago Dr. 
Fuller, the Medical Inspector, reported to the Local 
Government Board that " in sixty-four workhouses 



176 WAY STATIONS 

imbeciles, or weak-minded women, are entrusted with 
the care of infants." Dr. Fuller wasted his breath. 
The abuse still flourishes. As the Royal Commission 
admits, the person who to-day visits a workhouse 
nursery " finds it too often a place of intolerable 
stench under quite insufficient supervision, in which 
it would be a miracle if the babies continued in 
health." 

?* We were shocked," continues the Report, " to 
discover that infants in the nursery of the great 
palatial establishments in London and other large 
towns seldom or never get into the open air. 

" We found the nursery frequently on the third or 
fourth story of a gigantic block often without bal- 
conies, whence the only means of access even to the 
workhouse yard was a flight of stone steps down 
which it was impossible to wheel a baby-carriage of 
any kind. There was no staff of nurses adequate to 
carrying fifty or sixty infants out for an airing. In 
some of these workhouses it was frankly admitted 
that these babies never left their own quarters (and 
the stench that we have described), and never got 
into the open air during the whole period of their 
residence in the workhouse nursery. 

"In some workhouses 40 per cent, of the babies 
die within the year. In ten others 493 babies were 
born, and only fourteen, or 3 per cent., perished be- 
fore they had lived through four seasons. In ten 
other workhouses 333 infants saw the light, and 



WHY 177 

through the gates 114 coffins were borne, or 33 per 
cent, of the whole. 55 



" And the Local Government Board, 55 says Mrs. 
Barnett, " has stood by for years and stands by still 
and lets the evils go on. 55 This lady, speaking, as 
she says, with twenty-two years 5 experience as man- 
ager of a barrack school, two years 5 membership 
of the Departmental Committee, twelve years 5 work 
as the honorary secretary of the State Children 5 s 
Association, records the well-grounded opinion that 
the children should be removed altogether from the 
care of the Local Government Board. " If such a 
report, 55 Mrs. Barnett says, " had been issued on 
the work of the Admiralty or the War Office, the 
whole country would have demanded immediate 
change. 6 They have tried and failed, 5 it would be 
said ; 6 let someone else try 5 ; and a similar demand 
is made by those of us who have seen many genera- 
tions of children exposed to these evils, and waited, 
and hoped, and despaired, and waited and hoped 
again. 55 

I doubt if there exists in print a better plea for 
the urgency of Woman Suffrage than that embodied 
in the Minority Report of the latest English Poor 
Law Commission. This eloquent and amazing docu- 
ment is largely the result of years of work on the 
part of Mrs. Sydney Webb. It has been more dis- 
cussed, more written about in the interval since its 
appearance, than any utterance on this or kindred 



178 WAY STATIONS 

themes within our memory. And small wonder, for 
what it reveals is an incompetence and legalised 
cruelty in the treatment of the poor, that would be 
beyond belief did the Report come with less author- 
ity, or had anyone ventured to deny such allegations 
as that thousands of innocent children are shut up 
with tramps and prostitutes; that there are work- 
houses which have no separate sick ward for children, 
in spite of the ravages of measles, whooping-cough, 
etc.,; that 

" young children, in bed for minor ailments, have 
next them women of bad character under treat- 
ment for contagious disease, and other women in the 
same ward are in advanced stages of cancer, or senile 
decay; the pregnant women who come in to be con- 
fined are compelled to associate day and night, as 
well as to work, beside the half-witted and persons 
so physically deformed as to be positively repulsive 
to look upon." 

But since men's consciences are admittedly stirred 
by these volumes of indictment, why may we not 
reasonably hope that the abuses complained of will 
be done away? 

We may not hope that for a highly significant 
reason. 

The worst concrete evil arraigned (the general 
Mixed Workhouse) was condemned root and branch 
as long ago as 1834. It has been condemned decade 



WHY 179 

by decade ever since, by successive experts who had 
the ear of the Government of the day. The evil of 
existing conditions was admitted during a whole 
generation, by the Local Government itself. 

Why was nothing done? 

The administrators of the interests of the poor 
became entangled in the red tape of various con- 
flicting authorities, with the result that the ineffi- 
ciency and the inhumanity in this branch of munici- 
pal housekeeping is not a scandal only but a menace. 
The presence of women on the Boards of Guardians 
has been a help, not so much because of what, under 
the limitation of their power, they were able actually 
to do, but because of the opportunity their very 
helplessness gave them of gauging the evils bred by 
the operation of unwise laws acquiesced in by the 
authorities. 

Men have talked about these evils for five-and- 
seventy years. We see now, that until the portion 
of the community standing closest to the problems 
presented by care of the old and broken, the young 
children and the afflicted, until women have a voice 
in mending the laws on this subject, the inadequacy 
of the laws will continue to be merely discussed. 

2. Those who have read thus far will perhaps 
scarcely need to be told why women in one society 
alone have subscribed £50,000 in a little over a 
twelvemonth for the defence of woman's right to a 
voice in public affairs. 

This large sum has been contributed because, 



180 WAY STATIONS 

though the poorer half of the community, women 
are more ready than men to practise self-denial for 
a common good. This is not, as some men have told 
us, because women are congenitally more altruistic 
than men. It is because women are more used to 
the exercise of self-control. They are therefore less 
at the mercy of their appetites. This £50,000 that 
women have given to the W.S.P.U. is but a 
first instalment. It is largely the money of the poor. 
For it is not the so-called " rich women " who have 
most to give. The rich woman is often merely the 
wife of a rich man — a very different matter from 
having command of wealth. 

3. The next question asks : " Why will nurses, 
artists, librarians, writers, teachers give up congenial 
work to labour twice as hard, on half -pay or none, 
for the Suffrage ? " 

Because the women enumerated above are the kind 
whose personal experience has made clear the con- 
nection between the vote and wages ; teachers, for 
instance, who have given up posts in the National 
Schools to work for the militant Suffrage party, 
knowing that the Education Authorities will never 
allow them to return to work which (though unfairly 
paid as compared with men's remuneration for sim- 
ilar work) was to these teachers all that livelihood 
may mean to women who earn their bread. They 
are fired to add their quota to sacrifices others 
are making towards the end that those, who come 
after, may not find their hold on work more insecure 



WHY 181 

than a man's, or the salary less than a man's, for no 
fault in the work except that it was done by a woman. 
A fresh illustration of how the action of politi- 
cians may directly affect women's work was afforded 
by the Education Authorities' recent attempt to dis- 
miss married women from headmistress-ship of 
schools. Among others (who for no reason but that 
they were women and not single) Mrs. Stansfield 
was told her services would be no longer required. 
This lady was already married at the time of her 
appointment. No one denies that she has made a 
distinguished success as a teacher. But she is to 
give up her profession because, if women are so in- 
discreet as to marry, they must make the bed they 
lie on. " But why," Mrs. Stansfield asks, " should 
I be compelled to do the manual work of my house 
any more than do thousands of other married women 
who employ cooks, housemaids, and nurses?" She, 
like the woman of the cotton mill, is enabled by her 
earnings to employ a housekeeper. " I invite those 
who say that the home suffers to visit mine." But 
Mrs. Stansfield is a mother. " The sacred claims," 
etc. The lady tells us with pride and happiness of 
" two children whose birth necessitated some months' 
leave of absence, no more than the breakdown in 
health to which all, single and married, men and 
women, are alike liable. During the last thirteen 
years I can thankfully say I have not been absent 
from school half a day on account of my own chil- 
dren." To any who maintain that the children of 



182 WAY STATIONS 

married teachers suffer, she offers to introduce her 
son of fifteen (who is a Boteler scholar in the Sixth 
Form at the Warrington Grammar School), and her 
daughter of eighteen (who has just won an open 
scholarship at Oxford). Mrs. Stansfield further 
points out the penalisation of marriage involved in 
the proposal made by the authorities, and the loss to 
education involved by the removal from its service 
of the experience, the influence, and the motherly 
sympathy of married teachers. The present mo- 
ment, evidencing as it does a quickened sense on the 
part of women of the need to protest against in- 
justice, is held by the Education Authorities to be 
ill-chosen for pressing the marriage disqualification. 
As a result of the agitation, Mrs. Stansfield and the 
other married teachers are to be allowed to remain 
at their posts — for the time being. 

A second illustration of the sort of thing that is 
opening women's eyes is offered by the case of a girl 
journalist employed to write regularly for a London 
daily paper of enormous circulation. She did this 
satisfactorily, and was paid £3 a week. A young 
man journalist was employed to write on the same 
paper, and to supervise a certain page, at £15 a 
week. He had several people working under him. 
One of these underlings was presently discharged. 
The £3 a week girl was put into his place. She did 
her own work and the discharged man's still at £8. 
She was presently told that she was to familiarise 
herself as thoroughly as possible with the entire 



WHY 183 

work on that page as the head of the department, 
the £15 a week man, might be going away. She 
obeyed. In due course the £15 man vanished. The 
£3 girl carried on his work. No complaint from 
the editor. No sign of the return of the £15 man. 
He may have been engaged in cursing the tendency 
of women to undersell. 

Finally, when the last of the underlings for that 
department was dismissed, and the girl found herself 
carrying it on single-handed, she asked for a rise 
of salary. She was treated to an odious scene, was 
accused of having " a swelled head "- — and was told 
there were five hundred girls waiting who would be 
enraptured to take the post on the terms that she 
found fault with. 

She knew this was true. But she also knew that 
none of the five hundred had the threads of the work 
in their hands. She refused to back down, and at 
last was given a rise of £2, with a solemn warning 
against her ever presuming to ask for more. 

It is probable the overworked, underpaid girl was 
not the only sufferer here. The £15 man no doubt 
had his view of the significance of this story. 

To solve the difficulty it will not be enough merely 
to organise the women-journalists. Even the more 
desirable measure of organising men and women- 
journalists will not be enough. For the old concep- 
tion of the difference between the market value of 
women's work as compared with men's is so persist- 
ent that it is probably necessary for a while yet that 



184 WAY STATIONS 

the instinct of greed should give us ocular proof 
of the equal value of much of the work the two sexes 
do. Private employers will not be ashamed of pay- 
ing a girl £3 for £15 worth of work while the Gov- 
ernment is not ashamed to take precisely the same 
amount and quality of work from women, as in the 
Post and Telegraph Offices, and pay them less than 
men because, being voteless, the women cannot make 
their sense of the injustice an inconvenience to those 
responsible for its continuance. 

4. Why will well-bred girls, as well as older 
women, sell Suffrage papers in the streets, go about 
as sandwich-men, and suffer the scant civility of the 
police and the horseplay of rowdies? 

I have no experience of this myself, but I have 
cause to know that many a sensitive woman has set 
herself this task out of sympathy with the far more 
wounding experiences many of the workers in this 
Cause go through. Women who have not gone to 
prison, and have little or no money to give, give 
this particular service. It is in certain cases cost- 
lier than prison is in others. But the Suffragist 
who sells papers, or advertises meetings in the 
streets, does not, I think, often realise that besides 
bearing witness to her faith and earning a few shil- 
lings for a particular society, she is contributing no 
small share to doing away with the European equiv- 
alent for the Eastern woman's veil, i.e. that shrink- 
ing from publicity which has been elevated into a 



WHY 185 

virtue and which has so powerfully aided men 
in preserving their sex-dominance. So well have 
women been drilled in the idea that it was undesir- 
able and dangerous for them to do work in public 
(save as ministrants to pleasure), that we are no 
longer struck by the difference in what is connoted 
by the word " public " as applied to the two sexes. 
To say of a person he is " a public man " is to as- 
sert his honourable eminence. To say " a public 
woman " is to say the worst you can. 

Since the days when Andromache confessed to 
Hecuba : 

" All that men praise us for, 
I loved for Hector's sake, and sought to win. 
I knew that alway, be there hurt therein, 
Or utter innocence, to roam abroad 
Hath ill report for women ; so I trod 
Down the desire thereof, and walked my way 
In mine own garden. . . ." 

— from that day to this the woman who tarries in 
the public street has been a target for the marks- 
manship of men. Women have greatly feared these 
slings and arrows. They still fear misapprehension 
of their motives. By mastery of that fear decent 
women are doing their share towards making the 
streets a less unfit place for decent women. A chap- 
ter could be written about " why/ 5 but that is not 
my business here. 

5. Why are women ready to accept the alienation 



186 WAY STATIONS 

of many of their friends and most of their menfolk? 

Not only because certain women have come to see 
that the average man is unable as yet to realise the 
injustice women suffer under, or that he is unable to 
realise that such injustice can and must be abolished. 
The woman accepts alienation not because she no 
longer cares for men's opinions, and not solely be- 
cause she sees that a temporary alienation may be 
unavoidable. 

There are in operation two subtler reasons than 
these. The first is the growing spirit of loyalty 
which makes a woman ashamed to side with the 
stronger party, from whom she stands (and all the 
world knows she stands) to gain such obvious ad- 
vantages, whether in the field of business or of sen- 
timent. The second reason she accepts this alien- 
ation is because she is beginning to recognize 
woman's own share in the responsibility for men's 
blindness. She knows how it has been fostered by 
woman's slavish desire at all hazards to please. 
That old vice must go. It will die the sooner for 
men's learning, as soon as may be, that there are 
women ready to suffer not only in material advan- 
tage, but in friendship and affection, if their doing 
so can make the position clearer, and so shorten the 
difficult days that lie between us and a better under- 
standing. 

Of all the sacrifices women lay on the altar of the 
new faith, none perhaps costs so much as the aliena- 
tion from friends. Only the unintelligent will con- 



WHY 187 

tinue long to mistake the sacrifice for sex-antag- 
onism. 

6. Why, instead of petitioning, are women now 
(demanding justice? 

Not only because petitioning has been tried and 
has failed. But because women now see that by pe- 
titioning they kept alive a misapprehension already 
too old. It is misleading to beg for a thing that no 
man has a moral right to withhold. 

7. Why, instead of helping as before to elect an- 
other " Member " (pledged to go to Parliament and 
support Woman Suffrage), are women going them- 
selves, in hundreds, " to knock at the doors of the 
House"? 

Because so many men sent there in times past 
to work for Woman Suffrage have been either won 
over afterwards by the more clamant voices of 
voters to give precedence to voters 5 interests ; or 
else the Woman Suffrage candidate, once elected, 
became hypnotised by the routine of the House, and 
by the growing sense of the helplessness of the pri- 
vate Member. Since realising the necessity of re- 
minding legislators of unkept promises to women, 
women have gone to Westminster to do the " re- 
minding " in an effectual way. They have also gone 
there as a sign to the Government that the steward- 
ship of the unjust steward is gravely menaced. 

8. Why, rather than promise to abandon a dan- 
gerous and often health-destroying agitation, have 
hundreds of women gone to prison? 



188 WAY STATIONS 

Because, of the two parties of Suffragists, those 
who want the vote in the dim and speculative future, 
and those who want it now — the militant Suffra- 
gists belong to the latter group. 

It was Mazzini, I think, who pointed out how often 
the way to reform has lain through prison. But 
this truth was not in the minds of the first Suf- 
fragists who went forward by that road. Not the 
farthest-sighted of them all had any prevision of 
the moral awakening, the new birth of Faith, the 
passion of comradeship born of pain — no glimpse 
of the direct good destined to come through prison 
was given those women who first adopted the so- 
called " militant tactics." They simply did the 
nearest duty with all their might — considering only 
the end, resolute not to mind how rough the road 
thither. 

They appealed in the open streets for followers. 
In leading the new attack on the oldest and most 
powerful of the citadels of wrong, they asked the 
help of women and of girls. With what looked like 
insane ignorance of human nature, before the 
" weak " and " timid " horde they unfurled a strange 
new flag, inscribed: 

Through Evil Report to Honour ! 
Through Prison to Freedom! 

Then the miracle happened. Instead of flying 
forthwith from leadership like this, a legion rallied. 
They followed into dark unlikely places. Once 



WHY 189 

there, the timid and the weak found an inexplicable 
new power. It enabled them to show steadfast faces, 
and to feel no fear in their hearts. 

Much talk was in the air of armaments and mili- 
tary duty. The rapidly growing army of women 
came to look upon themselves as soldiers enlisted in 
a Holy War. Here for the first time were women 
banded together (as men had been so often), ready 
to make any sacrifice so they might be freed from 
an evil yoke. And above all, to do what they could 
to this end, now. In the eyes of these new soldiers 
women's belauded patience had been the undoing of 
the race. Patience was a comfortable vice — vile 
when practised at others' cost. 

You may not approve these women, but they have 
made Woman Suffrage a living issue. 

9. Why, if so-called . " militant tactics" are good 
tactics, were they not employed before? It may be 
argued that they are good precisely because they 
are employed only after other means have failed. 
They say (I do not know upon how good authority) 
that a young Suffragist being interrupted in the 
middle of her speech at a mass meeting by the ques- 
tion : If these methods are advancing the Cause, w T hy 
had they not been tried earlier, answered briskly, 
" Because I was at school." There is more than 
audacity in the retort. 

This is pre-eminently a young woman's crusade. 
I have not met but one older woman in the move- 
ment who does not get her strongest conviction of 



190 WAY STATIONS 

its not too distant triumph out of the fact that the 
Cause has won the young to its support. 

We have at last enlisted those without whom none 
of the battles in the ancient or the modern world 
would have been fought. Who, after all, make up 
the armies? The young. Who won Marathon? 
The youth of Greece. Agincourt, Waterloo, Get- 
tysburg? The young. A distinguished survivor 
of the Civil War told me the average age of his 
brothers in arms was seventeen to eighteen years. 
Read the inscriptions on the stones, rank on rank, in 
Federal or Confederate burying-grounds. You will 
say to yourself: How young these soldiers were — 
" mere boys.' 5 

So with our soldiers, the mere girls. It is the 
younger generation that is at the door. And with 
their coming, naturally, some modification of method. 
Henceforth not only talking and writing — Deeds, 
not words. 

But deeds more rational and less destructive than 
those that men have employed in the lesser Revo- 
lutions. At least that is what we hope — we on- 
lookers. I do not mean to disguise the fact that 
those who, like myself, believe war to be a survival 
of barbarism, are accustomed to think of physical 
violence, not in women only, but in men, as a re- 
crudescence of the ape and tiger instinct that has 
been responsible for the thousand failures of hu- 
manity to attain a true civilisation. I shall not 
deny that some of us found the stones thrown by 



WHY 191 

women stones of stumbling. Therefore, precisely 
we should bear witness to the fact that when we came 
to understand how little the stones meant violence, 
and how much they meant moral indignation against 
the abuse of physical force, we were able to see in 
them the instruments not of destruction but of 
building. For the stone-throwers thought as 
straight as they aimed. They saw themselves con- 
fronted by the plain question. Which do you care 
most for, order or justice? They cared most for 
justice. 

I have heard Suffragists complain that they have 
had to apologise for these women. I do not know 
how they have dared to do that. For, however un- 
palatable, the truth is that, to the so-called militant 
women, the evils that other women bear are more 
intolerable than they are to the rest of us. These 
militant women are the women who cannot sleep in 
their comfortable beds as we do in ours, knowing 
the wrong that walks abroad. Those of us who do 
not openly aid and abet these women may at least 
speak humbly of a devotion greater than our own. 

10. And now I am come to the last question which 
I may be held to have already tried to answer : 
" Why, after all, do women want the vote ? " And 
yet I shall not have presented the case unless I add 
one word upon this final count. 

There is no use in writing at this time of day 
about Woman Suffrage without writing frankly — 
or as nearly so as is possible to a woman born in 



192 WAY STATIONS 

the days when frankness about the things that mat- 
ter was so discouraged that in most of us it either 
died young — or lived on, maimed and halting. So 
then to be frank in so much — let us give fair- 
minded people some final measure of the distance we 
have travelled, and the point at which we have ar- 
rived, by admitting what passes through the mind 
of many a quiet, home-keeping, non-militant woman 
in England to-day, on being asked this last ques- 
tion on my list of " Why? " 

He would be in error who supposed that the Suf- 
fragist who is called on to recapitulate her reasons 
for desiring the vote is pleased with her task, or 
flattered at being asked her opinion. She is pri- 
marily conscious of an emotion of anger. She says 
to herself: I am called on at this time of day to 
defend our demand for a share in the higher gains 
of civilisation. 

That is what it comes to. She remembers that 
the case for Woman's Suffrage has been before the 
reading world for a hundred years. It has been an 
organised public movement for half a century. Yet 
most of the legislators who would withhold the fran- 
chise make no effort to familiarise themselves with 
the growing body of literature reflecting women's 
views on the subject, nor will they take the trouble 
to acquaint themselves with the long record of quiet 
(too quiet?) propaganda. A member of the pres- 
ent Cabinet asked me, in an interval when there 
was no by-election to enlighten him, why the Suf- 



WHY 193 

fragists did not hold meetings. One society alone 
had held throughout the length and breadth of the 
kingdom over a thousand Suffrage meetings in the 
preceding month. The Cabinet Minister had not 
heard of these meetings. They had been quite or- 
derly, and the press will not report women's political 
meetings unless something sensational happens. 

Meanwhile, men in high places continue to advise 
" quiet propaganda " to women whose friends have 
grown grey practising quiet methods, to women who 
know what delay means to wives and mothers in the 
Potteries, to the shop-girl forced on the streets, to 
the pallid army of workhouse children. 

The time has gone by when men can hope to win 
gratitude from public-spirited women by legislative 
scratching at the surface of the wrongs that women 
bear. 

Those men who hope to turn the tide of women's 
resentment at being forcibly prevented from lifting 
a voice about their own affairs — those men who 
would tinker at Factory Acts, and Children's Bills, 
without finding out how these changes are regarded 
by women — light-hearted legislators undertaking 
these tasks would be waked from their vain dream 
of doing this work acceptably, could they know the 
feeling that seizes on women at men's daring to think 
themselves qualified to decide such questions without 
consulting those chiefly concerned. 

During the debates upon the Children's Bill the 
helpless ignorance of their subject on the part of 



194 WAY STATIONS 

men dealing with the issues raised, was not lost on 
the women who, with expert knowledge, sat behind 
the grille listening, impotent, while the all too lim- 
ited time was wasted in argument about what might 
be held good for a child of three. What did a 
creature of three require? What, after all, was a 
creature of three like? They sat and solemnly de- 
bated. 

In the end women were obliged to supplement pri- 
vately the legislators' wholly inadequate knowledge. 
Women were obliged by cumbrous and roundabout 
ways to protest against, and contrive to get recast, 
the clause relative to the evils of " overlaying," as 
well as other provisions in the Act inspired by the 
ignorance of its framers. 

But I will not pretend for a moment that, if all 
such abuses were done away with to-morrow, there 
would not still remain, in the mind of many a woman, 
a sense of the obligation she is under to take her 
portion of the responsibility (which she shares mor- 
ally with man) for the ordering of the world. He is 
incapable of doing her work for her. But even if 
the task were not beyond his competence, it would 
still be her business and not his. 

And so it is that being asked why she thinks she 
would like to vote, the natural woman behind her 
mask of custom is conscious of a stirring of indig- 
nation not always consonant with the sober setting 
forth to which she is invited. But there is sig- 



WHY 195 

nificance, there may be light in this heat — all the 
more that some of the women I speak of have no 
personal reason for discontent. Some of them have 
no shadow of a shade of grievance against their 
individual destiny. They are women for whom life 
has been so full and so rewarding, that possession 
of the vote would mean to them, personally, no more 
than a new obligation. Among others, the women 
I mean are those for whom Cicely Hamilton speaks 
in that brave and original book, " Marriage as a 
Trade," when she says : " To no man, I think, can 
the world be quite as wonderful as it is to the woman 
now alive who has fought free." The women I mean 
are of equal fortune with those who formerly ran 
off with their good luck as a dog does with a bone, 
growling if any ventured near to claim a share. 

To-day thousands of women who live out of the 
danger and dust of the battle — the secure and 
happy, as well as the sweated and the fiercely strug- 
gling — are conscious of this impulse of anger at 
hearing, a Vheure qu'il est, that there are men in 
the world fair-minded and not ungenerous, who can 
be supposed to want to know " why " women want 
the vote. 

Tell us, rather, why men think themselves fitter 
to judge of our needs than we? Tell us how, with- 
out inextinguishable laughter, men can imagine 
themselves to be the sole repositories of wisdom. 



196 WAY STATIONS 

TIME TABLE 

December, 1909 — May, 1910 

A review of the fourth year of activity on the part of 
the Women's Social and Political Union showed that a 
campaign fund, which at the end of 1908 stood at 
£26,000, had risen at the end of 1909 to £60,000. The 
salaried staff, increased by twenty-three now numbered 
ninety-eight. The work, which in its early stages had 
been carried on in a small back room in a Chelsea lodg- 
ing house, was directed now from headquarters (con- 
sisting of twenty-one rooms) at Clement's Inn, and ex- 
tended by means of branches established throughout the 
kingdom. The official organ of the Union, "Votes for 
Women," was enlarged and had reached a circulation of 
30,000. 

In addition to the immensely increased activities of 
various other Suffrage Societies, new and old, the W.S. 
P.U. had held over 20,000 meetings during the year. 
Three times the Union had filled the great Albert Hall. 
Forty meetings had been held in the Queen's Hall; more 
than that number in the St. James's Hall. At the 
largest halls in the principal provincial towns crowded 
audiences had carried a resolution calling upon the Gov- 
ernment to pass a Bill admitting women to the franchise. 

No official notice was taken of the widespread peace- 
ful propaganda. The only attention given officially to 
the great body of Suffragists was accorded to those who, 
in pressing their claims, came in conflict with the laws; 
laws which, as the Militants held, did not logically apply 
to taxpayers who were denied representation. 

During the year three deputations were refused a hear-* 



WHY 197 

ing by the Prime Minister. There had been 294 women 
arrested, 163 imprisoned; 110 Hunger Strikes and 36 
cases of forcible feeding. Ninety-four women had 
pleaded the right of the subject to petition. Two of 
these cases, Mrs. Pankhurst's and Mrs. Haverfield's 
were isolated for the purpose of testing the principle. 
Their counsel, Lord Robert Cecil and Mr. Henle, con- 
tended that if there was a right to petition the Prime 
Minister (whether as Prime Minister or as a Member of 
Parliament), then there must be an obligation on the 
part of the Minister, or the Member of Parliament, to 
receive that petition. 

The Lord Chief Justice agreed as to the right to pre- 
sent a petition to the Prime Minister. He even said that 
petitions to the King should be presented to the Prime 
Minister. But upon a quibble he disallowed any obliga- 
tion upon Mr. Asquith to receive a petition presented in 
person — an obligation which even kings (before these 
duties were undertaken by their Ministers) had not ven- 
tured to deny. But in 1909 the ancient Bill of Rights 
of the British people was cancelled, in so far as it related 
to women whose petition was known to deal with their 
political disability — though a better ground for petition 
than taxation without representation history does not 
reveal. 

In any case, that " way out " was tried too, and was 
seen to be barred. 

A vigorous anti-Government policy had been carried 
on at by-elections by the W.S.P.U., and was continued 
during the next General Election, which was fought on 
the issue of the Lords' Power of Veto, but the question 
of Woman Suffrage was also kept well before the public 
mind. 



198 WAY STATIONS 

The opening of the year 1910 saw the Liberals re- 
turned to office greatly shorn of their previous strength, 
and saw the Suffrage agitation entering a new phase. 

Officials of the various Suffrage bodies were now ap- 
proached by friends, in and out of Parliament, in an 
attempt to establish some common ground upon which to 
found a united effort to get a Suffrage Bill, in all its 
stages, through Parliament during the current session. 

The great labour entailed by this enterprise was under- 
taken by Mr. Brailsford as Secretary of the Conciliation 
Bill Committee, whose Chairman was Lord Lytton. 

Although at first very doubtful of the issue, the W.S. 
P.U. — under great pressure and in the act of framing 
plans for continued militancy — was brought to agree 
that, at the beginning of a new Parliament, the Govern- 
ment should be given a fresh chance to deal fairly by 
women. 

Other Suffragists were so full of confidence in the 
new situation that in February, 1910, the directors of 
the policy of the militant Union were prevailed upon to 
declare a truce. 

The two-edged weapon of militancy was not aban- 
doned, but laid aside, in the hope that those were right 
who said it had served its purpose and was no more 
needed. 

One of the early acts of the new Home Secretary, 
Mr. Winston Churchill, wore a conciliatory air. There 
were Suffragists still in prison when Parliament met, and 
the embarrassment of the late Home Secretary, under 
the test heroically applied by Lady Constance Lytton, 
threatened to find a parallel. Mr. Churchill was obliged 
to face questions in the House of Commons as to the 



WHY 199 

legality of directing a stream of ice-cold water upon a 
prisoner by means of a hose-pipe introduced through the 
window of her cell; and as to the assault upon and the 
frog-marching of another prisoner. Responsibility for 
these cowardly deeds against defenceless women was 
speedily disavowed by Mr. Churchill — yet he refused 
to punish their perpetrators or those in authority over 
them. He had " no control over the appointment of 
prison justices/' he said. But Home Office control of 
His Majesty's prisons was newly emphasised by Mr. 
Churchill's announcement of a fresh set of Penal Regu- 
lations. There was to be a distinction drawn in future 
between prisoners guilty of crime implying moral turpi- 
tude and — other prisoners. No one needed to be told 
who these other prisoners were, solicitude for whom had 
led to special legislation. Already certain abuses made 
public by militant ex-prisoners had been amended. In- 
deed, the first great material good reaped from the going 
to prison of women of character was that gaols were 
made less unfit for human beings of any sort. In 
addition to other improvements, iron bedsteads had super- 
seded the plank, earthenware plates had replaced dirty 
tin, and some measure of ventilation (other than that ob- 
tained by breaking glass) had been provided in the form 
of sliding panes. Further changes recommended by the 
new Home Secretary had to do with the treatment of the 
ordinary female prisoner between sixteen and twenty- 
three. She was to be taught dressmaking, etc., and a 
committee of visiting ladies were to try to find her work 
on her release. 

The new tendency in legislation betrayed a grow- 
ing uneasiness in the law-maker touching persons who had 



200 WAY STATIONS 

formerly been given little or no thought. The tendency 
referred to synchronised with the rise and spread of the 
militant movement. 

But the legislator, although acquiescing more or less 
grudgingly in the new compulsion, made little advance 
in the direction of consulting women experts as to the 
needs of their own sex. The result was that, with the 
best intentions, legislators were as likely to harm women 
as to benefit them — a danger emphasised in the threat- 
ened attempt to deprive married women of the right to 
work outside their homes. A Cabinet Minister, speak- 
ing at Leeds, had said that women's factory work, espe- 
cially married women's work, must be enormously cur- 
tailed. Should this high-handed measure be carried, 
thousands of women in the textile trade alone would have 
been thrown out of work and many a home impoverished. 
Yet the Government was said to be already instituting 
inquiries among employers as to the number of married 
women who were working for them. Another indication 
of the close relationship between economic and political 
freedom was offered in a different walk of life. A 
movement was on foot to prevent the appointment of any 
married woman as teacher in the schools. 



XI 

SHALL WOMEN WORK * 

There are probably a good many people inclined 
to think the question, " Shall Women Work? " has 
been decided in the affirmative, once for all, by the 
pressure of modern life. 

But nothing in this world is finally settled that is 
not settled for the good of the world. 

Those who think there is no longer any serious 
difference of opinion about women's Working should 
be reminded of the people (more numerous and more 
influential than we may like to admit) who are con- 
vinced it is not for the good of the world that women 
should work. 

Now if people who represent that opinion are un- 
able to bring about what they hold will be a better 
state of society, they can at least retard the day 
which many people are trying to hasten — the day 
when women will be as free to work as men are. 

I stop a moment to deny that it is woman's phys- 
ical weakness that makes question of her fitness for 
work. She is the drudge of the world. She sweats 

* A lecture given in St. James Hall, London and here re- 
printed by permission of the Fortnightly Review, Also of the 
Metropolitan Magazine, New York. 

201 



202 WAY STATIONS 

over all the cooking-stoves of Christendom. She is 
a pit lassie in the north. She is an agricultural 
labourer in the south. She makes bricks and bi- 
cycles in the Midlands. In Germany she is still 
harnessed alongside a dumb beast and drags a loaded 
cart. 

I think we won't question her physical capacity — 
though I have wondered why, when people discuss 
her staying-power, no one seems to remember her 
record in a profession where (though she is neces- 
sarily hard-worked) she has long been well-treated 
and well-paid. Anyone who knows the life of the 
stage knows it is an arduous one. Yet there are 
thousands of girls and women (not chosen as being 
the most robust of their sex) who are able to play 
long, exhausting parts night after night, ten months 
at a stretch, throughout a lifetime. I have known 
women do that in America, where, in addition to the 
strain of such journeys as no actress makes in Eng- 
land, the custom was not only to play on Sunday 
(as well as other days), but to play twice, making 
ten performances a week. Even in many first-class 
companies there was not always an understudy for 
the leading lady. She was expected never to be ill 
— never to fail her manager. She did not fail him. 
I never knew a theatre closed on her account unless, 
being a star, she could consult her own mere con- 
venience. s 

I do not deny that the new generation of hockey- 
playing, out-of-door girls will have far more strength 



SHALL WOMEN WORK S03 

and infinitely better chances than we had. But even 
the old-fashioned sort of woman got through too 
much sustained hard work for fair-minded people to 
say she hasn't the strength to work. Whether it is 
good for her is another matter. Before dealing 
with our main question, let us inquire : 

Firstly : Is work a good or an evil thing? 

Secondly. Is it specially injurious for women to 
work on the same terms as men? 

Thirdly: What is the connection, if any, between 
women 9 s wages and women's franchise? 

Now, as to the essential good or evil of work. 
The more closely one looks into that matter, the 
more clear it seems that the old curse upon work 
was really levelled against overwork, or against work 
under evil conditions. The independent people, even 
the excessively rich, sometimes work. They some- 
times overwork. Nobody in all the labour world has 
worked harder than the great artists — unless it be 
certain self-made millionaires. Why do such people 
work hard? Because their work interests them, fas- 
cinates them, makes all so-called recreation a labour 
and a penance. 

Nature starts us all fair in this great enterprise. 
We begin life thinking very gallantly about work. 
When first we come across it, it has so few terrors 
for us we call it by the gayer name of play. " Let 
everything be done to building," says the Apostle. 
The principle is the same whether the building be 
visible or invisible. Now, every little boy and girl 



204 WAY STATIONS 

alive agrees with St. Paul as to the paramount ne- 
cessity for building. 

The child builds his house of blocks for joy. The 
man building later might have no less joy. We all 
know men with whom the passion for building has 
not lessened, but grown with their growth. Most of 
us remember the rapture of the tool-box. There 
are people of ripe age in the world who have had to 
work a lifetime with their brains, and are not yet 
cured of that first joy of working with their hands. 
I know a little girl who has playthings enough for a 
dozen; wax dolls, expensive mechanical toys. Two 
things give her most pleasure. One is alive ; it is 
a cat. The other is a little rack of housewife's im- 
plements ; small brooms, brushes, a dustpan, a dust- 
cloth. Seventeen men and women servants in that 
house where she lives call the use of similar imple- 
ments " work." The child finds no play such good 
fun as imitating what she sees them do. A little 
boy, overcome by the fascination of the long-haired 
hearth-brush, was ready to do battle for exclusive 
use of it. My point is: the joy those fortunate 
children feel has no real need to die. One of the 
things we most pity the poor for is that in them the 
joy of work has been killed so early. By nature we 
all, men, women, and children alike — all who are 
born healthy and live unperverted — have a sense 
of joy in making something. The sick, the old, the 
sweated — they are the ones who shrink. Not to 
have to work? Why, it is the ideal of the superan- 



SHALL WOMEN WORK 205 

nuated servant — the poor soul, who, though giving 
up "service," cannot give up the servile mind. 

For the masters of the world to have to give up 
work is humiliation ; it is acceptance of defeat. 

But this thing that is so prized by the freest and 
most gifted among men is not good, some say, for 
women; or good only in modified, sternly restricted 
form — like certain poisons. 

The effect is bad, we are told, in answer to the sec- 
ond of my questions, unqualifiedly bad, where women 
work on the same terms as men. Some of these 
would-be reformers value woman so highly that they 
cannot abide the notion of her working for a living 
on any terms. Instead of giving better opportuni- 
ties for wage-earning, they would see poor women 
(above all, poor married women) legislated out of 
such liberty as they now possess. 

Of the suggestion recently made in this direction 
by the President of the Local Government Board, 
I may as well confess at once, many women find it 
difficult to speak quite patiently. And they are the 
same women who feel so strongly that mothers 
should have the best conceivable opportunity to do 
well by their children, that they would not leave this 
supreme consideration to the tender mercies of mod- 
ern industrialism. 

Now what is it the President of the Local Govern- 
ment Board proposes? That the State should help 
poor married women to give the State worthy citi- 
zens? Oh, no. He proposes merely that the earn- 



206 WAY STATIONS 

ing power of a certain class shall be destroyed by 
Act of Parliament, 

You might think that poor mothers went out to 
work, as a person goes to a public-house, for rec- 
reation or oblivion. But that is to misunderstand 
the matter. 

Even to the women of wider cultivation, of many 
interests — women who have had happy experience 
away from home, in the world's wide playground — 
to the majority even of those women there is nothing 
so interesting, so absorbing, as their children. We 
have all heard people complain of the less self- 
critical mother making a bore of herself to other 
folk by her tendency to narrow down all life to 
the limits of the nursery. It is only by an effort 
she remembers that little Lucy's charms, and little 
Tommy's precocities, are not as engrossing topics 
to all men as they are to her. 

A woman of the world, without children, but not 
without wisdom, said to me last Christmas : " When 
I want to give my contemporaries real joy I invite 
them to come and watch their children at a party." 
That woman understood human nature. The in- 
stinct she so justifiably appealed to is intensified in 
the poor woman. She has little outlet for either 
thought, or action, except in her home. To the 
woman threatened by this new tendency in legisla- 
tion her children are society ; her children are story- 
books; they are drama and pictures, poetry and 
ambition, and all the future. Now what is it that 



SHALL WOMEN WORK 207 

drives a poor woman to turn her back on all that, and 
to sit, day in, day out, turning a wheel in a mill? 

Legislators must be made to realise that the in- 
stinct urging women of that sort out of their homes 
is a very precious thing. Perhaps it is the most 
precious thing in nature. There are those who say 
it is the corner-stone of civilisation, for it is the 
instinct to lift up the standard of life. In women 
the most common expression of that impulse is the 
attempt to do the best for the children. Those 
working-women, to whom the President of the Local 
Government Board would presume to teach their 
maternal duty, have no perverted passion for factory 
or mill. Their passion is to keep a roof over the 
family, better food on the table, warm clothing on 
the children, a little store for the inevitable sickness, 
a more decent standard of home-keeping for ill-paid 
husband and all. Are these hard-driven women to 
be denied the right to choose between the greater evil 
of semi-starvation and the lesser evil of confiding 
their young children to an older child, or, as often 
happens, to the grandmother, or to someone in- 
capacitated for work out of the home? Does some 
gentleman in the Cabinet — does any man anywhere 
— care more about the welfare of those children 
than their mother ? Let her decide which of the two 
evils is the greater. 

For, what Mr. Burns proposes is not really that 
poor mothers should not work. He, better than 
most men in Parliament, knows that the last thing 



208 WAY STATIONS 

to be tolerated in a labourer's wife would be her not 
working. Mr. Burns would forbid her being paid 
for work — - that's all. 

In the factory the woman works for stated hours 
at stated tasks, easily learned, mechanical; and for 
that receives the few shillings that make all the dif- 
ference to the little home — between being pinched 
and being fairly comfortable. At the factory she 
does one woman's work and is paid for it. At home 
she is not paid at all, and is expected to fill the offices 
of half a dozen women. Not for certain hours only, 
but uninterruptedly from dawn till dark (and 
through much of the night, if the children are young 
or there is sickness), the wageless mother does the 
work of nurse, cook, housemaid, seamstress, char- 
woman, and laundress; and for all that, her reward 
may be to see her children go hungry. No; para- 
dox as it sounds, those women must be allowed to 
work in order not to overwork. 

But let us be fair. Let us confess that the Presi- 
dent of the Local Government Board is not alone 
in his superficial thinking on the subject. 

We have heard even good Suffragists — I recall 
one very influential — who has been heard to say : 
" I want a vote in order that I and others like- 
minded may help on legislation against woman's 
working outside her own home, so that she shall de- 
vote herself to her children." 

You would suppose, to hear these people talk, that 
two things were inevitable: 



SHALL WOMEN WORK 209 

First, that every woman must have children to see 
to. 

Secondly, even if we agree to confine our attention 
strictly to the women with children, we are asked 
to go farther. We are asked to suppose that these 
children never, never grow up! 

There is, apparently, no use in saying to such 
folk that, on the one hand, not every woman has 
children, and that, on the other, in spite of love and 
care, some women's children die. No ! the bereaved 
mother, the childless widow, and the incorrigibly 
maiden — they none of them deserve to be consid- 
ered. Away with them! 

The mind of reformers such as these is stamped 
indelibly — is wholly engrossed by the picture of 
the woman with the child at her breast. I am as 
ready as my neighbour to admit the beauty and 
significance of that picture. But it is mere thought- 
less sentimentality to wish to legislate for all women 
at all times of their lives, as though the Madonna 
picture represented the static, the only possible as- 
pect of the adult woman; as though the years that 
lead up to that beautiful moment, and the years that 
lead onward, after the child has grown out of the 
mother's arms — as though all the rest of life were 
of no consequence to the mother and of no account 
to society. 

The more scientific presumption seems to be that 
the mother will fare better, and the child will fare 
better when motherhood resumes its ancient place — 



210 WAY STATIONS 

not made the super-specialised function which, as at 
present (partly on account of that very super-spe- 
cialisation), is a function often very poorly carried 
out. Motherhood is not, as the weaklings would 
have us believe, a kind of malady. It is one of the 
conditions of health. In certain tribes still upon 
the earth, living much in the open air, nomadic, close 
to nature, the woman has been known to fall out of 
the ranks of the migrating group, to lie down by the 
wayside, and give birth to a child, to rise up in an 
hour or two, and, with the infant in her arms, appear 
that same evening in the camp of her people. One 
does not quote that as an ideal, except of health — 
of the woman's freedom from the valetudinarian view 
of her great and wholesome office. 

The fact that needs to be emphasised is that, if it 
lives, the youngest child grows up. In the minds of 
those persons obsessed by an idea of the difficulty, 
the danger, and the all-devouring preoccupation of 
the maternal task, no child ever grows up. The 
mother's life must be absorbed by it, not only for 
a few years, but forever. 

Now, in this country, more and more, marriage is 
postponed. In the great middle class, more and 
more, women do not marry till close upon, in many 
cases not till after, thirty. From the point of view 
of the race good and the individual good, I regard 
this as regrettable. But we are dealing with these 
conditions as we find them. 



SHALL WOMEN WORK 211 

Is a woman, then, to do nothing with the eager 
and vigorous years until she marries, except look out 
for a husband? If she does not marry till she is 
thirty there will only be an average of ten or twelve 
years out of her whole life, during which she may be 
bearing children and ministering to their infant 
needs, till the time comes when the youngest, the 
last, is out of her arms. At the beginning of middle 
life even the woman with children finds that for 
many hours of every day, if not (as in the great 
middle class) for most months of the year, the chil- 
dren are not only out of her arms ; they are out of 
the house ; they are at school. But certain reform- 
ers don't know this. They think the children are 
all still wailing on the maternal breast. 

As a matter of fact, the mother has come to the 
time of life when she is less preoccupied by private 
concerns than ever before. And in many ways she 
is better equipped. Her sympathies are broadened. 
Her judgment has ripened. Her intelligence is at 
its keenest. She has gone long enough upon that 
adventure we all embark upon as children — the find- 
ing out what the world is like, and, most pressing 
quest of all in the beginning, what one's self is like. 
At forty-odd she knows the answer to a number of 
questions. At last she understands the game. 
Now it is in this phase of her life that for a certain 
type of man (I don't say for all, but, let us say, for 
most legislators) the woman has ceased to have any 



212 WAY STATIONS 

interest or any meaning, unless in her narrowest fam- 
ily relation to himself. Yet the average woman 
whose children are launched, the woman with her 
garnered knowledge and her disciplined soul, has 
reached the time when, if never before, she should 
be of use outside her immediate home circle. She 
has discharged only one share of her race debt, if 
she has accepted the usual destiny. With that rich 
possession for her background and her enlighten- 
ment, there she is! — arrived (as women confess to 
one another — half afraid of cheap sneers if openly 
they admit it), arrived at the securest, the least un- 
wise, the serenest, in many ways the best part of her 
life. What is she to do with it? 

Nothing. Or things so petty they make a mock 
of human worth. She is to sit with folded hands 
till her grandchildren give her back some pale re- 
flection of her one permitted task. This is a part of 
the monstrous waste that goes on in the world. If 
woman is legislated for at all, it is but to emphasise 
the fact, not that she is one of the world's two halves, 
but that she is " the sex," as the eighteenth-century 
gallant used to put it. For the legislator, too, 
woman is all sex. 

We may remember in this connection that it has 
been made a reproach to us that women are so ab- 
sorbed in sex matters. It is often quoted as a crown- 
ing instance of our unfitness for a share in the great 
affairs of State — in those high abstractions that 



SHALL WOMEN WORK 213 

occupy the minds of men. Yet what do we find? 
It is these nobler creatures — it is our pastors and 
masters — who are most determined to limit wom- 
an's experience to one order of activity. 

There is, no doubt, a growing proportion of women 
who are not as convinced as is, for instance, ex-Presi- 
dent Roosevelt, of the superlative value to society of 
the large family. Perhaps those women descry im- 
provement rather in the direction of small families, 
families in which the concern shall be quality rather 
than quantity. 

There is no sort of difficulty in understanding 
why, in this age of congested industrialism, exploit- 
ers of labour wish to see large families the rule. 
There is no difficulty in seeing why, under a reign 
of militarism, the same call should be sounded. But 
neither to fill the factories nor the ranks of armies 
does the civilised woman exist. 

There was once a man before whom all Europe 
trembled, who said that the greatest woman in 
France was she who had given birth to the most 
children. But it was this same Napoleon who gave 
death to more of the children of women than any 
one being of modern time. It was the man whose 
hand lay very heavy on women in other ways — the 
man who set down in his famous Code the law for- 
bidding to the unmarried mother even the attempt 
to establish the paternity of her child. 

When we get to the bottom of the question, we 



214 WAY STATIONS 

find that what the law-makers mean by 

shall not work " is : woman shall be restricted to one 

sort of work. We say : " Let her decide." 

You may safely let her decide, for the work people 
wish to make compulsory is the work she loves best. 
But not till she undertakes it freely shall we have 
a race of human beings as uniformly healthy, happy, 
and comely as a flock of wild birds. 

Absolutely the only way to ensure woman's under- 
taking her great task freely — at Nature's bidding 
rather than at necessity's — is to give the woman 
economic independence. Let no one oppose that 
ideal, and be allowed unchallenged to say he has the 
good of the world at heart. So long as women get 
their living by one order of activity only, so long will 
some women get their living illegitimately. As Mrs. 
Charlotte Perkins Gilman so wisely says : " All the 
social purity societies put together do not equal the 
trade school as a preventive of vice." 

Even the most selfish must presently see what is 
bound up in this question of women's economic inde- 
pendence. Society is a unit. Evil done in the dark 
comes to light in the injury done to family life. The 
wrongs of obscure, hard-driven women are avenged 
on the women in high places — yes, and on the men 
and on the children. 

We would alter the old line that runs: 

" For men must work and women must weep." 



SHALL WOMEN WORK 215 

Men must work and women must work, or else 
both will have good cause for weeping. 

We come now to my final question: What is the 
connection, if any, between women's wages and wom- 
en's franchise? 

Prof. Dicey and Mrs. Humphry Ward say there 
is no connection. 

Well, let us see. To what, in the first place, do 
they attribute the fact that all over the w T orld the 
question of woman suffrage is forcing its way to the 
forefront of practical politics? 

If woman suffrage were merely a matter of ab- 
stract justice, we know we should not vote till the 
sons of women are all saints and sages. 

Not even " Mrs. Pankhurst and her henchwomen " 
(as an agitated Liberal paper summed up the direst 
menace to the Government at the last Newcastle elec- 
tion), not even the founder of the Women's Social 
and Political Union and the inspired group she has 
gathered round her at Clement's Inn — not even they 
could win the vote by the utmost they might do or 
say or suffer. 

If women had not alrealy entered the industries 
and professions the cause of woman suffrage would 
not have advanced beyond the status of the pious 
opinion. 

There were women long ago — yes, and men — 
who saw not alone the justice of this cause; they saw 
in it the salvation of society. But their vision did 



216 WAY STATIONS 

not prevail, could not prevail, for the reason that 
political independence is bound up with economic in- 
dependence. 

In modern society, so deeply involved are these 
two forms of liberty that until women had attained 
some measure of one, it was useless for them to hope 
for the other. Political independence would not be 
so hard to win, nor so long in coming, if to get that 
sort of independence you were not obliged to have 
some measure of the other sort — though, to have 
a fair measure of either, you must have both. Not 
that it was necessary for woman to have economic 
independence before she was needed in public affairs, 
but that a certain number of the sex had to win 
economic independence before woman could show in 
any large and generally convincing way that she 
realised she was needed, and that she was, moreover, 
prepared to obey the call ! 

No single utterance from " the Suffrage side " 
has roused so much ire as the saying that women's 
wages will improve when they get the vote* The 
Anti-Suffrage Society has issued a leaflet pointing 
out Suffragist teaching upon this matter as perhaps 
their chief enormity, whereby they mislead the igno- 
rant and the poor — especially at election times — 
playing upon their ignorance or their greed. It is 
this tenet of the suffrage creed that most annoys Mrs. 
Humphry Ward. It drives Prof. Dicey to such fury 
that he says anyone who preaches this faith is 
" either grossly ignorant, or may fairly be described 



SHALL WOMEN WORK 217 

as the knave of knaves." Well, why — thus warned 
— do we continue to say that wages and votes are 
intimately connected? Because it is true. And not 
only true, but demonstrably true. No Suffragist 
says that, by the mere dropping of a ballot paper 
into a hole, the little political machine will be set 
humming like a music box, and that, with a tinkle and 
a chink of gold, sovereigns will straightway pour 
out in a stream. No ! The Suffragist forms her 
calculations on a more reasonable basis. What is 
that basis ? It is that the laws of economics - — un- 
like Prof. Dicey — have no prejudice on the sub- 
ject of sex. 

Working-women realise how stupid they would 
prove themselves if they were to ignore the object- 
lesson offered by the working-man. Women are not 
dismayed by the fact that men have not yet (and 
by themselves) attained conditions absolutely ideal. 
It is something that since the working-man's en- 
trance into practical politics his wages have risen — 
a rise — estimated by such an authority as Mr. Sid- 
ney Webb — at so amazing a rate as fifty per cent. 
Whether by so much, or by less, it is a matter of 
history that amelioration of the working-man's lot 
(undreamed of in '67 and '84) has kept pace with 
the broadening of the franchise. Women have 
watched the English Parliament at work, bringing 
about the most drastic of these changes. And why 
should we extract no meaning from the fact that in 
the Colonies conditions for both men and women 



218 WAY STATIONS 

wage-earners have been improved since women had 
the vote? Is it only out of England that good may 
be effected by wages boards? And, if so, why are 
certain English politicians so eager to introduce 
them here? No one denies that the establishment of 
a minimum wage in other places has abolished the 
more flagrant forms of sweating. No one denies 
that this was a gain especially to women, for women 

— abroad as well as here, and always — are the 
first sufferers from exploitation. 

But on this side of such large and enlightened 
measures (as are the glory of New Zealand, for in- 
stance) there are other economic advantages inher~ 
ent in the vote. Women are not such childish think- 
ers as to suppose that the conditions of labour are 
not as important as the wage. They are the wage, 
rightly considered, for they are health and efficiency ; 
they are " the wages of going on." But if we fol- 
low the course of English politics alone — I don't 
mean if we merely read a party newspaper, but if 
we hear something of all sides ; above all, if we watch 
the forces at work (during an election, for instance) 

— we will not deny that legislation for the working- 
man is largely conditioned by the voters' pressure 
upon their representatives in the Commons, 

Ten or twelve years ago I heard a great employer 
of labour fulminate against the impudence, the rank 
impossibility of the Workmen's Compensation Act. 
" It would be the death of British industry." 

Yet I lived not only to see that Act passed, but 



SHALL WOMEN WORK 219 

to hear that same great employer say : " Oh, it's 
fair enough." 

Now who converted him? Not the economists. 
Not his brother capitalists. The working-man con- 
verted him. Not by appeals. By the way he voted. 
As soon as it was clear that the working-man meant 
to send to Parliament the candidate pledged to sup- 
port that measure, just so soon compensation for 
men injured in work became " fair enough." 

The poor man's point of view is not forgotten in 
these days, for he is ably represented in the House of 
Commons. Even the most inarticulate — one would 
say, most helpless section of men — the unemployed 
— find friends in Parliament to plead their cause. 

But if any body of human beings needed help 
above all others one might think it would be the un- 
employed women. 

We have not forgotten how the public duty to 
those defenceless women was interpreted by the au- 
thorities. We might have supposed the awful 
plight of those women, facing starvation in mid- 
winter, presented every conceivable claim for speedy 
alleviation. No. Their plight presented every 
claim save one. Nobody was officially responsible 
for or to them. 

But this, and similar neglect of women's most cry- 
ing economic needs, is so familiar to all who care 
about the matter that I will give (very briefly) a 
single one among the many object-lessons offered us 
in America, just to show how little such things 



220 WAY STATIONS 

depend upon Cabinet personnel or apon any merely 
local ^.iditions. 

A woman teacher in a great public school in 
America instituted an inquiry a little while ago into 
the reason why, more and more, women teachers, 
qualified according to custom (by high record and 
time of service), failed to get promotion to head- 
mistress-ship. Right and left, on every side, men 
notoriously less well-qualified were advanced over 
the women's heads. What did it mean? Were 
women, after being successful through many years 
— were they failing all of a sudden in a profession 
which in America has become peculiarly the educated 
women's profession? (The well-equipped man grav- 
itates to pursuits offering the greater prizes.) No 
one wanted to deny that a certain proportion of 
women candidates might deserve rejection, but why 
should this large percentage suddenly be said to have 
fallen below the standard? Why should even the 
women already in enjoyment of the better-paid and 
more honourable posts — why should they, upon 
obscure or frivolous grounds, be set aside in favour 
of men ? When thoroughly sifted, the matter turned 
out to be the simple one of votes. The great officials 
in the Education Department wanted to keep their 
lucrative offices. To do that meant a careful culti- 
vation of votes. A headmaster was a vote. A head- 
mistress was only a woman qualified to teach. 

The Anti-Suffrage League denies the close connec- 



SHALL WOMEN WORK 221 

tion between the vote and wages. Not so the prac- 
tical politician who is against us. He opposes 
granting the vote on the precise ground that, when 
once women vote, they will insist upon, and they will 
ultimately achieve, economic independence. 

And then the most dreadful things will happen. 
I have been reminded of the outcry of some years 
ago (most people have forgotten it, but there was 
an outcry) against women's bicycling. Bicycling 
was not only unladylike, it had the most dire phys- 
ical results: it unfitted women to be mothers. Per- 
sons who, with that fear upon them, w T ere deterred 
from a wholesome pleasure lived to see in the great 
sanatoriums a contrivance by means of which a 
woman too weak and ailing to ride a bicycle, being 
mounted on a saddle, was put through an exercise 
which imitates as closely as possible the action and 
the effect of bicycle-riding! That exercise is now 
admitted to be at least innocuous, but exercise of 
the vote would upset women's delicate machinery 
beyond repair — so I was told the other day by 
a distinguished man of science, ornament of many 
learned societies, and one unlearned — the Anti- 
Suffrage Society. I quote him because he does not 
share the usual " anti " view. " Votes have nothing 
to do with wages? Stuff and nonsense," said this 
wearer of many honours, the holder of an enviable 
public post. " The reason," he said, " that women 
mustn't be allowed to vote is because, if they did, 



222 WAY STATIONS 

they'd be altogether too independent. Why, they'd 
be flooding the learned professions — competing 
with experts." 

" But," I said, " that doesn't alarm you ! Their 
flimsy, illogical minds, you know ; their deficient brain 
weight." (His brain is enormous. But it seems 
to give him no sense of security.) 

" No," he said ; " the women would work and 
cram ; yes — oh, they'd pass the examinations ! And 
what next? They'd be wanting the best-paid 
places! Getting them! " I suppose I showed I 
could bear the thought of that, for he said : " You 
don't understand what's involved. Those women 
won't want to do their duty." I thought, in my in- 
nocence, he meant their duty by the fat offices they 
had filched from men. " No, no," he said ; " I mean, 
they won't want to marry, those women ! " I 
thought he was wrong, but he was a very learned 
person, and I didn't like to contradict him. " No, : 
he said angrily, " those women — they'll prefer to 
enjoy themselves! " 

" But surely," I said, " married people are not all 
miserable." 

" No," he said, " not at present." 

But that was because the woman felt settled. If 
the man wasn't perfection, she just made the best 
of it. She had to ! And great domestic peace had 
come out of that. But if the wife had a vote and 
could get a good living independently of her hus- 
band, the man would have always to be minding his 



?> 



SHALL WOMEN WORK 223 

p's and q's. If he didn't, the minute she didn't like 
something she'd be banging the front door! 

So the only way to make a woman endure wife- 
hood was to cut off all means of escape! No Suf- 
fragist I ever met thinks so ill of husbands. I told 
the great man it had been left for him to say quite 
the worst thing I had heard about matrimony. 

There are always people ready to be in a panic 
lest Nature mayn't be strong enough to keep the 
race going. It is a delusion that only one-half of 
humanity are in any danger of harbouring. Women 
smile at such a fear. 

I should like to ask those men who think woman 
is developing a terrifying disposition to slave at 
intellectual tasks, and a mighty determination to 
excel away from home — I should like to ask men 
who fear the effect of that new tendency, to remem- 
ber a fact or two. Taking into account the long 
story of the ages, women are new at earning distinc- 
tion, except of one sort. Most women know what 
it is to be held (at some time, by someone) an adept 
at the old task — the art of pleasing. But a very 
small proportion of the sex, as yet, knows the joy 
of winning independence by means of the better-paid 
professions. Remember how very new women are at 
that, and how very often they have been told they 
couldn't do it! One of the first medical women to 
receive her degree from a Scottish university was 
warned by an old doctor (her friend and helper) 



224 WAY STATIONS 

not to delude herself with the idea that because she 
had got her degree she was going to get a practice. 
" Why, some men find that hard enough ! Remem- 
ber ! " he said grimly, " remember I warned you — 
by the time you're able to earn your bread you won't 
have teeth to eat it with. 55 She earned her bread 
from the first year. 

But women are still a little surprised and excited 
to find they can do these things. Give them time. 
When the doors of the professions, instead of being 
so jealously guarded — -or opened, if at all, such a 
little crack that she must push and squeeze if she is 
to get through at all - — when the doors are flung 
wide, only some women will go through them. And 
those who do will walk in orderlywise, not pressing 
and over-straining. The need for that will be no 
more. 

And those that later go in with dignity and come 
out with honours, they will owe their dignity and 
their honours to the women who are fighting this 
hard and dusty fight for enfranchisement. The 
happy wives and mothers of the future, too, who 
stay at home, not because they can't do anything 
else, but because home is for them the best of all 
possible places, they, too, will owe their fuller meas- 
ure of usefulness and of content to the Suffragist, 
just as the Suffragist, in her turn, owes her power to 
the women who first forced the doors into the trades 
and the professions. To the woman teacher and to 
the medical woman, pre-eminently, our debt is in- 



SHALL WOMEN WORK 225 

calculable. But every woman mill-hand, every little 
half-timer (though we hope to eliminate her) — 
every one of those wage-earning women, may walk 
her way proudly. She has had her share in the 
betterment of the world. 

TIME TABLE 

May — August, 1910 

The death of the King (in May, 1910) had a marked 
effect on the impending crisis between the two Houses 
of Parliament. The General Election which had seemed 
imminent was postponed. The leaders of the two great 
parties in the State agreed that an attempt should be 
made to compose their differences by conference. 

In this rebirth of hope for a peaceful solution of politi- 
cal quarrels the Suffrage question shared. The Concilia- 
tion Bill was not a wholly satisfactory measure in the 
eyes of the Militants. It stopped short of the ideal of 
equal voting rights for men and women. It was a com- 
promise agreed upon, after much labour of adjustment 
and prolonged discussion, by a committee composed of 
twenty-five Liberals, seventeen Conservatives, six Irish 
Nationalists, and six members of the Labour party, and 
it had for Suffragists of all creeds one prime recommen- 
dation. It was a measure which, in the opinion of Mem- 
bers of Parliament, could be passed during that session. 
In this faith all the Suffrage societies found themselves 
not only working for a common end, but agreeing upon a 
common policy as the means of attaining their end. 

No society worked harder in the interests of the Con- 
ciliation Bill than the W.S.P.U. From every Suffrage 



226 WAY STATIONS 

platform in the country the advantages of the Concilia- 
tion Bill were explained and advocated. Miss Christabel 
Pankhurst wrote in the Union paper, pointing out the 
unprecedented good fortune of having a Bill approved 
by men of such widely differing political creed as the 
Liberal Minister for Foreign Affairs, Sir Edward Grey; 
the Tory ex-Minister, the Hon. Alfred Lyttelton, and 
the Chairman of the Labour party, Mr. Barnes. " Never 
before/' said Miss Pankhurst, " has there been within 
the Commons so widespread and so influential a move- 
ment as this towards Women's Enfranchisement . . . 
members of all parties, men of the first political rank, 
working for the immediate concession of Votes for 
Women/' 

On June 14th, 1910, the Bill was introduced in the 
House of Commons by Mr. Shackleton, and the first 
reading carried without a division. The Prime Minister 
was asked to promise facilities for the later stages. In 
the interval of waiting for this promise, memorials to the 
Prime Minister in favour of the Bill were signed by 189 
Members of Parliament, 300 doctors, by dignitaries of 
the Church, educationalists and other eminent people. 
At countless meetings resolutions were passed and sent 
to Mr. Asquith. A monster procession of the united 
Suffrage societies, organised by the W.S.P.U., marched 
in thousands through London to a mass meeting at the 
Albert Hall. The overflow from that gathering could 
not be contained by the Kensington Town Hall. Never 
had Suffragists rallied publicly in such vast numbers as 
in support of the Conciliation Bill. 

All the omens were set fair. 

Mr. Asquith went so far as to receive a deputation of 
Suffragists of the Constitutional variety, 



SHALL WOMEN WORK 227 

These events were very distressing to the Anti-Suf- 
fragists. 

They appeared in a deputation of protest before the 
Prime Minister, and in other ways manifested their acute 
uneasiness. 



XII 

MR. PARTINGTON'S MOP* 

When people opened their newspapers one morning 
last month they saw an article headed: 

A £100,000 ANTI-SUFFRAGE FUND 

Whatever the political faith of the reader, no one 
on seeing the names of the signatories to the fund 
could doubt that such persons would find the raising* 
of £100,000 the lightest part of their undertaking. 

For the promoters of Anti-Suffrage agitation are 
mainly men, and men of large means. Double the 
amount called for could have been raised without 
invoking other than the published list of supporters. 
No reader would doubt but what (since these gentle- 
men thought £100,000 ought to be raised) they had 
forthwith raised it. The announcement that only 
£13,000 had been subscribed came as an anti-climax. 
Yet we must suppose that the full sum will be forth- 
coming. The project is, financially speaking, so 
poorly mothered and so handsomely fathered, that 
it would be pardonable, in this instance, to accept 
the Anti-Suffrage doctrine of woman's negligible 
share in the question of Parliamentary Franchise, 
were it not for the fact that these rich and powerful 

* Published in Votes for Women, Aug. 12, 1910. 

228 



MR. PARTINGTON'S MOP 229 

gentlemen are not ready themselves to subscribe the 
£100,000. 

They want women to help them! 

Now, how do they propose to persuade women to 
contribute money, time, and influence towards frus- 
trating the determination of other women to take a 
share in the responsibilities of the nation? 

Lord Cromer and his friends cannot reasonably 
ask their Anti-Suffragist ladies to go about arguing 
in public that women should keep out of public life. 

If, however, casting logic to the winds, they should 
send women forth upon this errand, in every town 
and village up and down England these emissaries 
will encounter the Suffragists — a hundred to one 
of the Antis — women organised, practised, popular, 
tireless. 

The Antis cannot hold the crowds against these 
trained speakers, they cannot hold their own in de- 
bate or in devotion, or in that passion of faith that 
makes a Suffragist more a Suffragist every day she 
lives. Even if the Anti women are sent out into the 
open, they will not long remain there. The chief 
Anti-Suffragist appeal will be made discreetly. A 
large portion of that £100,000 will be expended in 
sowing broadcast leaflets and articles. 

Let us put ourselves in the place of a recipient of 
these printed appeals. Imagine a person who until 
now has been too indifferent, or too occupied, to fol- 
low either side of the argument. 

Since not even the most leisured apostle would 



230 WAY STATIONS 

wish to waste time in preaching to the converted or 
the unconvertible, we will consider the case of the 
person with open (or openable) mind, to whom 
propagandist literature is presumably addressed. 

What is the initial impression made upon a reader 
of this description? It is that Anti-Suffragists set 
out to prove: 

(1) That the Enfranchisement of Englishwomen 
would weaken if not ruin England. 

(2) That a vigorous and widespread agitation 
for the Suffrage in the U.S.A. was quashed by a 
counter agitation on the part of American Anti- 
Suffragists. 

(3) That what American Antis could do, English 
Antis must set themselves to accomplish. 

Before the Open-Minded Novice goes the length of 
putting her hand in her pocket, or even so far as to 
rank herself with the Antis, she may want to examine 
the grounds for thinking that disaster would follow 
upon women's concerning themselves actively and 
directly with the affairs of State. All the more does 
that theory cry out for investigation in view of the 
fact that the Antis themselves urge women to take 
an active share in affairs of the municipality. 

The Anti-Suffragist distinction is not clear. The 
line drawn between laudable and reprehensible ac- 
tivity is found, on examination, to be strangely 
arbitrary. 

It amounts to this: Women must not vote for 
Members of Parliament because, if they did, some 



MR. PARTINGTON'S MOP 231 

day the women in a majority might vote against 
a minority of men, who, although few, would be able 
(and ready !) to cudgel the women out of their po- 
sition. Thus, since the women's vote would stand 
only for public opinion, the weak majority would be 
violently swept aside by the superior physical force 
of the minority. 

If this is an intelligent anticipation, it is as in- 
telligent to anticipate such a state of things with 
regard to the municipality as in reference to the 
State. Yet no one seems to fear that if a majority 
of women were elected to some Board of Guardians, 
and the few brave men elected were to oppose a 
measure advocated by the majority of women, the 
result will be that gentlemen guardians will set to 
and beat the lady guardians. 

The Antis talk of force as though all force worthy 
of the name was muscular. They profess little or no 
faith in the spiritual forces which we had thought 
were, in all civilised countries, the governing forces. 
The Antis seriously believe that we would all be at 
one another's throats, but for the police, backed by 
tjhe Army and Navy. Nations still, they think, at- 
tain and maintain their ascendancy by physical 
force. 

The Open-Minded Neophyte may not have for- 
gotten that a few weeks ago fresh light was shed 
on the physical force question by the black and 
white prize-fight in Nevada. Although inclined, 
like the Antis, to over-estimate the part played in 



232 WAY STATIONS 

the modern state by physical force, the majority of 
the American nation recognised that the only sig- 
nificance of the late contest lay in the exaggerated 
importance attached to it by the more ignorant and 
excitable among the negroes. 

The spectacle of a white champion being ham- 
mered out of recognition by a burly black, instead 
of illustrating to negroes the inherent savagery and 
stupidity of such a waste of force, is said to have 
fired the simpler souls with the notion that black 
Jack's victory showed his race the way to respect 
and power. 

The intelligent observer in both races, saw the 
matter differently. Odious as the Reno spectacle 
was, it probably served a good end. Instead of its 
fostering the old delusion as to the true ground of 
the white man's superiority, the Reno fight empha- 
sised the fact that were physical force indeed the 
bulwark of ascendancy, the white man need not look 
to bearing his burden long. 

Happily the gains of the human race are guarded 
by subtler forces. 

The Open-Minded Novice may suspect that this 
opinion is shared in private even by the Anti-Suf- 
fragist old gentlemen who, nevertheless, stand up in 
public and (with no sense of the irony of the situa- 
tion) say to able-bodied young women that those 
who make the laws must also have the physical force 
to cause those laws to be obeyed. 

Perplexity will descend upon the open mind with 



MR. PARTINGTON'S MOP 238 

the first Anti-Suffrage manifesto, and will deepen to 
the last. The Novice will find more than one leaflet 
bitterly denouncing any measure of enfranchisement 
that might (however temporarily) leave out wives 
and mothers. The poor Novice had been trying to 
believe it a good thing to be left out ! But she re- 
adjusts herself to thinking that somehow in spite of 
the vote being (in women's hands) an abomination, 
it is, nevertheless, a grievance and a public menace, 
that a Suffrage Bill should be considered which does 
not, at any cost, expressly provide votes for wives — 
on the new ground of a marriage qualification. No 
sooner has the Novice got that firmly into her head 
than she is told that any Bill which would give 
wives votes would mean the destruction of domestic 
peace ! 

To the Open-Minded One's further bewilderment 
she discovers that the outcry against any Bill that 
should exclude married women does not come from 
Suffragist wives and mothers, but from men, or from 
women who want to prevent women of any sort from 
voting. 

Even a Novice may come to suspect that this 
solicitude about the married woman's vote has its 
parallel in the disingenuous plea that the Conciliation 
Bill is not sufficiently democratic. 

For whom is the Conciliation Bill not democratic 
enough? 

For the Labour party? No, the Bill is fathered 
by a Labour Leader and is supported by his party. 



234 WAY STATIONS 

The Bill is democratic enough for a Keir Hardie, 
but it is not democratic enough for a Churchill. 

But suppose the Novice, who began her investiga- 
tion open-minded, has now closed her mind. Sup- 
pose her convinced by some feeling, stronger than 
any logic, that she ought to help to do for England 
what Anti-Suffragists are said to have done for 
America. There is still the danger that she may 
look into that claim too. She will find easily ac- 
cessible reprints of the English report of the great 
victory won by the Transatlantic Antis. Not 
nearly so accessible, yet to be found in any file of 
" The Times," is the complete and authoritative 
refutation of that report. 

The shut mind is like to gape again in amazement 
at discovering the steady advance of the Suffrage 
cause in America in the past three years, and that 
in the ferment of American franchise interests 
mightier forces are at work than any wielded by 
the handful of Anti-Suffragist ladies, unversed in 
practical politics, undisciplined in public life, help- 
less and negligible before the larger issues of the 
Transatlantic problem. 

Should the inquirer not take time to learn the 
significance of such witness to the steady advance 
of the Suffrage faith in America as Jane Addams 
offers — the most confiding Novice is like to fall 
upon suspicion through the self-defeating partisan- 
ship of that great friend of the Antis, " The Times." 

The romantic Anti-version of the American situa- 



MR, PARTINGTON'S MOP 235 

tion has lately been reiterated in all the emphasis 
of unlimited space and large print, precisely as 
though on the highest authority that account of 
the matter had not been proved to be without founda- 
tion in fact. 

" The Times " used formerly to print the refu- 
tations coming from instructed persons of high 
character. The Suffrage question has, it seems, 
grown too serious for continuance of the old usage. 
The latest authoritative contravention of " The 
Times' " report was denied insertion in its entirety. 
Even the summarised version of Miss Alice Stone 
Blackwell's expert evidence was dismissed in small 
type. 

That was hardly fair. But such tactics of panic 
will in the end serve the Suffragists rather than the 
Antis. To do this seems to be the fate of each new 
Anti-Suffragist device. 

Even a Novice may see that the Suffrage cause 
in England has recently been given an immense 
lift by Lord Cromer and his friends. They achieved 
this by appealing to women for help to fight against 
their enfranchisement. That manifesto sent hun- 
dreds of the more quiescent Suffragists to their bank- 
books, to see how much more in the coming year 
they could spare to help their side. Rut for Lord 
Cromer's appeal many a ten-pound note that would 
have gone into clothes, or holidays, or what not, will 
find its way to Clement's Inn, to be transmuted into 
strength for the Suffrage Cause. 



236 WAY STATIONS 

One small effect of the new Anti activity will 
serve the Open-Minded as a straw to show the direc- 
tion of the wind. 

A carefully - — very carefully — expended frag- 
ment of Anti-Suffragist capital was invested some 
days ago in advertising. A lady on a shopping ex- 
pedition met, in the streets of London, a sorrowful 
little procession of sandwichmen bearing the an- 
nouncement " women do not want the vote." Now 
the lady in question had gone forth with no thought 
of propaganda. But for her encounter with that 
modest sign of Anti-Suffrage life the lady would 
have returned to her " proper sphere," bearing her 
womanly sheaves of frills, or feathers, or perchance 
a fresh supply of darning cotton for those objects 
of such passionate concern to many an Anti-Suf- 
fragist soul. 

But how could the lady go home and darn socks 
in peace remembering those sad old men crawling 
about the London streets with their mistaken in- 
formation? No doubt there were more potential 
sandwichmen not having a misleading message to 
carry. Why not give the other old men a job? 
The lady, so rumour says, repaired to Clement's 
Inn. But the people there were all very busy. Too 
preoccupied to think about the old men. 

" But their boards say we don't want the vote ! " 
" Well, ( that only reminds people that we do." 
Still the lady-shopper was not content. She drew 
a cheque and asked to have it applied for the purpose 



MR. PARTINGTON'S MOP 237 

of sending a much greater number of sandwichmen 
to follow the " Don'ts " about, with posters, telling 
what bodies of organised women " do." The list 
was so long that there was danger of the " Don'ts " 
being lost in it. At least that would appear to be 
the reason why the old men bearing the " Don'ts " 
disappeared from the London streets, and^ left the 
" Do's " in possession. I offer the little incident as 
a symbol. 

Many such straws will be blown about in the 
autumn winds this year, if the Antis keep their 
word. And be sure the Novice will take note of 
these straws. 

If the recipient of Anti-Suffragist literature has 
mind as well as " openness " — if she is an ally worth 
enlisting — before she gives her adherence to the 
opponents of the Suffrage, she will (to some extent) 
examine the claims of its defenders. 

Even if, in this perilous exercise, she is not con- 
verted to the Suffrage faith, she will learn enough of 
the activity and determination of those who are, 
to make her doubt whether she is well inspired to 
drop her subscription into the pit of hopeless oppo- 
sition. 

If she mixes at all freely with both camps she 
cannot fail to discover that many of the Antis who 
at the beginning of their campaign were confident 
and active, have since, upon one pretext or another, 
withdrawn from the contest. 

She will see that, though ease is not what the 



238 WAY STATIONS 

Suffragist is 6 * out for," it is easier every day to be a 
Suffragist — and every day it is harder to be an 
Anti. 

The reader of official Anti publications will hardly 
fail to catch the plaintive note in the reminder that 
the Suffrage Movement is not only amply supplied 
with money, but (unkindest cut of all) is "served 
by women who seem to give their whole time to its 
promotion," The charge is truer than the writer 
of the lamentation knew. If the Antis are not over 
eager to give their money for their cause, still less 
are they willing to give themselves. If the forces 
of reaction have any unpaid servants, they are very 
few. The numbers of those who, without money 
and without price, work for enfranchisement — they 
are legion. 

The more the inquirer wants to see the Anti 
cause prevail, the more she will realise the signifi- 
cance of the exhaustless stream of help flowing to- 
wards the Suffrage societies. Every day more 
women, and happily more men, are giving time, 
money, and determination, in increasing volume, to 
swell the flood. Not even Mrs. Partington would 
try to turn back this tide. She leaves Mr. Parting- 
ton, with his hundred thousand pound mop, to prove 
the futility of the undertaking. 



MR. PARTINGTON'S MOP 239 

TIME TABLE 

May, 1911 

The permeation of journalism, as well as of the less 
evanescent forms of literature, by Suffragist views has 
been an element in the propaganda so quiet as to find a 
way unchallenged into many an Anti stronghold, yet so 
steady as to show its widespread effect only in the retro- 
spect. In this educational work the women have their 
share. Our Writers' Suffrage League has among its 
members Conservatives, Liberals, and Socialists, women 
of leisure and women who toil for their daily bread, 
members who are militant and members who are non- 
militant. The League therefore did not, and could not, 
as a body take part in the more active political demonstra- 
tions. Its members expected to be left free, and were 
left free, to serve the Cause in whatever way individual 
opinion and opportunity made fitting and practicable. 
An opening for propaganda was presented to writers 
when, in response to the new demand for information 
about the fight for Enfranchisement, a great London 
paper (" The Standard ") for the first time devoted 
columns of its space, daily, to full accounts of meetings, 
deputations, debates, and to articles and correspondence 
for and against the Suffrage. A vast amount of the 
most effective work done by the Writers has been anony- 
mous. 

Of signed work the League has published : " How 
the Vote was Won," Cicely Hamilton and Hedley Charl- 
ton; "The Suffrage Question/' by Madeleine Lucette 
Ryley; a cartoon post card of "Justice," by W. H. 
Margetson; "A Pageant of Great Women," by Cicely 



240 WAY STATIONS 

Hamilton; a "Prologue/* by Laurence Housman; 
"Why?" by Elizabeth Robins; "Lady Geraldine's 
Speech/' by Beatrice Harraden ; " Women's Plea/' a 
poem by Lillian Sauter; ".Under His Roof/' by Eliza- 
beth Robins; and " Feminism/' by May Sinclair. 

The League has sent delegates to various conferences, 
organised benefit matinees and held drawing room and 
public meetings. It took part in the great procession or- 
ganised by the W.S.P.U., in June, 1910, when one 
hundred members walked under the Writers' banner and 
four carriages were decorated with its colours. The 
Writers' League was also well represented in the pro- 
cession of July, 1910, and in that of June, 1911, when 
its contingent walked behind a new banner which had 
been specially designed by Mr. Margetson. 

The League has from the first received that kind of 
devoted, highly intelligent, and self-merging service from 
the acting Committee (notably in the person of its Hon. 
Sec, Miss Hatton), which is one of the many reassur- 
ing manifestations brought us by the Women's Movement 
and one of its chief honours. The League is so fortu- 
nate as to have now for its President that celebrated writer 
and woman of proved public spirit, Mrs. Flora Annie 
Steele. 

One can hardly take leave of the Writers' League 
without mention of the distinguished member who, serving 
the Cause in her way, has made the largest sacrifice of 
time, ambition, health, and most of the outward things 
that sensitive, proud-spirited women prize. On the fin- 
gers of one hand might be counted the people in this 
country who have made as many and as valuable converts 
to the Suffrage as Miss Evelyn Sharp. I saw one of her 
converts once, on a grey winter morning. At an hour 



MR. PARTINGTON'S MOP 241 

when most of the London millions were still asleep in 
their beds, I saw a man standing alone on the bleak, 
wind-buffeted street-corner, opposite the gates of Hollo- 
way. Others presently joined him, and all stood wait- 
ing, a long while it seemed to us (what to those on the 
other side!) — waiting for the slight figure with the spir- 
itual face and shining eyes to come out of prison. And 
when she came I noticed, among other things, the 
gentle reverence of the welcome given to Evelyn Sharp 
by the man I had been observing chiefly because he was 
in clerical dress. And I wondered at my own wonder to 
see him there. For surely there was once a Church 
" Militant/' 

We, of the Writers' League, found yet another ally 
" in orders." The Rev. Dr. Cobb, of St. Ethelburga's, 
a good friend to the principle of the Suffrage, did us 
the honour to preside at one of our meetings. And this 
was before the Church had given the sanction afterwards 
vouchsafed at the Queen's Hall Meeting, under the Chair- 
manship of the Bishop of Oxford. Canon Hensley Hen- 
son had not yet said publicly that " the principle of 
Christianity was the equality of the sexes," nor reminded 
the public that women in the apostolic age had frequently 
been preachers. Nor had the Bishops of Winchester 
and Lincoln, along with many of the clergy, publicly 
declared for the Suffrage. 

I do not seek to associate any Churchman with a form 
of social faith, or works, which he does not explicitly 
endorse. I have little doubt but even so valiant a soldier 
of the Cross as the Bishop of Oxford may draw the line 
of his sympathy this side of militant women. Yet there 
were many of these amongst his audience at the meeting 
called to emphasise the religious aspect of the Woman's 



242 WAY STATIONS 

Movement — women to whom it meant much that such a 
man should say in the face of protest and in defiance 
of criticism (vide the newspapers of that date), "I am 
as certain as I can be of anything in the world, that the 
Woman's Movement, however much it may benefit by the 
individual activities of men and women, will never secure 
its position without legislative change, without such legis- 
lative change as makes women, side by side with men, 
voters and constitutors of our legislature/' 

On the same occasion the voice of the younger genera- 
tion in the Church spoke hopefully to our ears through 
the mouth of the Headmaster of Repton. The Rev. 
William Temple began his speech with these words: 
" The question which is occupying us to-night is quite 
undoubtedly the profoundest question and the most far- 
reaching in its ramifications of any that now confronts 
European civilisation." In his peroration he urged: 
" Daughters of the new era, claim your share in the 
world's movement. . . ." And many of the daughters 
present preferred Mr. Temple's description of the work 
they had in hand, rather than the limit-setting phrase 
under which the meeting was invoked. 



XIII 

THE WOMEN WRITERS* 

Dr. Cobb 9 Ladies and Gentlemen: 

Most of what I have to say will He a3dressed 
more particularly to my fellow Women Writers. 
But I should like, in passing, to put before the gen- 
tlemen present a point of view too often obscured 
in this controversy of ours. There are people under 
the impression that Anti-Suffragists have a better 
opinion of men than Suffragists have. I want to 
say that the very reverse of that is true. I might 
go farther, and say that only Suffragists really have 
faith in men. Only Suffragists really respect them. 
You cannot respect men if you do not respect human 
nature. There is such a very great deal of human 
nature in men. 

I was reminded afresh a day or two ago of the 
way in which Anti-Suffragists (all unconsciously) 
betray their poor opinion of men. This one of many 
instances occurs in the speech of a woman writer 
made, a little while ago, at a dinner of the Hardwicke 
Society — a speech against the resolution in favour 
of women as jury members. What this lady said 
may be supposed to have had some weight, for she 

* At the Criterion, May 2, 1910. 

243 



244 WAY STATIONS 

was chosen as a brilliant and distinguished (deserv- 
edly distinguished) representative of our profession 
— not the founder and leader of the Anti-Suffragist 
party, but a woman well-accustomed to the success 
that crowned her efforts on the occasion to which 
I refer. For the resolution she spoke against was 
defeated by a large majority. In the course of 
her speech this Woman Writer said she was op- 
posed to the participation of her own sex in the 
administration of justice. She declared that 
woman's nature did not contain " a proper element 
of justice " . • . that women were by nature unfair, 
though (notice this), though their unfairness, in 
some instances, was a source of fascination. 
" Where, 55 she asked, " would men get sympathy 
if women were impartial? " 

The report does not say how the great legal lights 
and other learned gentlemen met that shock — but 
it is the kind of back-handed compliment the Anti- 
Suffragist will often pay. 

Only the Suffragists appreciate you, gentlemen! 
If we criticise you from time to time, what does that 
show but our own good faith, and our confidence in 
yours? We will criticise you to your faces, and give 
you a chance to set us right ! 

Now, to my fellow Women Writers I have some- 
thing to say about our work — about the field for 
the exercise of literary talent, and for service to our 
Cause. 

We have agreed before to-day as to the practically 



THE WOMEN WRITERS 245 

limitless power of Suggestion. When we talk about 
Suggestion we know we are dealing with forces be- 
yond any reach of science as yet to gauge. Still 
we notice how, for ages, this great factor of Sugges- 
tion has been pressed into the service of the education 
of men. From the time a boy is old enough to fol- 
low a fairy tale, he is told how Jack killed the Giant. 
Jack always kills the Giant, just as David always 
slays Goliath. When the boy is older he begins to 
take from history, from the classics, and from litera- 
ture in general, the incentive and the cue for action. 

The Philosophy of History is new in education. 
Until yesterday history was little more than the rec- 
ord of the deeds of heroes — of men who fought 
against great obstacles and overcame them. 

Now what impression is the eager girl-mind given 
of the world? That it is a place not only where all 
the great deeds are done by men — but a place where 
all the great qualities are said to be masculine. 
The world will never know how much power to serve 
it has been killed in women's hearts by that old 
phrase, " Only a girl." The pages of the past are 
strewn with such records as that which says : " A 
daughter was born this day to Duke Ercole, and 
received the name of Beatrice, being the child of 
Madonna Leonora, his wife. And there were no 
rejoicings — because everyone wished for a son." 
Yet what boy of that noble house made so great 
a figure in fifteenth-century Italy — what Prince of 
D'Este exercised such influence upon art and politics 



246 WAY STATIONS 

as this same Beatrice? And in whom of all her 
house is the general reader (as well as the student of 
the Renaissance) so ready to take an interest in 
to-day ? 

My complaint is that enough has not been made 
of such traces as history preserves of significant 
lives lived by women. When biographies are at- 
tempted, too often they fall into feeble hands. Or 
worse - — into the hands of those literary scavengers 
who search women's lives in the spirit of Peeping 
Tom. Some of the greatest women of the past have 
suffered most from this sort of posthumous dis- 
honour. When we read the pages of such chron- 
iclers as I have in mind, we see again and yet again 
that the fine work the woman did was an offence - — 
for which she is made to pay by gross intrusion into 
her private life, and by misleading accounts of some 
detail which the intrusion revealed. What is there 
in such biographies to inspire and to lead you on? 
Everything rather to lame the spirit, and drive you 
back into obscurity. Yet these literary outrages 1 
should rather call upon women to take possession of 
this field themselves. 

As an illustration of what a woman can do here, 
let us take that fine example of art, which was also 
a fine example of literary friendship, Mrs. GaskelPs 
" Life of Charlotte Bronte." Very gifted men have 
tried their hands at that story. Oblivion is their 
portion. 

Would that George Eliot had found a Mrs. Gas- 



THE WOMEN WRITERS 247 

kell too! George Eliot's life fell into the hands of 
a man whom every lover of literature must honour 
on other grounds. His failure over George Eliot's 
life was the reward of his secret contempt for great- 
ness when it appeared in the guise of a woman. I 
think few well-intentioned men can enjoy writing 
about a woman's life. They do it with so embar- 
rassed an air. Perhaps they feel like a man asked 
to do housework when he longs to follow the fortunes 
of soldiers, kings, conquist adores. 

But the distaste for recording the domestic life 
of woman is as nothing compared to the distaste 
for contemplating her in any other relation. Before 
that dilemma you will notice how the less irate man 
will take refuge in facetiousness. When the diplo- 
matists of Great Catherine's day were routed by 
the Empress, they salved their feelings by calling 
her " Kitty of Russia " — well behind her back, as 
has been said. Some of the most distinguished men 
of the last century, who went to see George Eliot, 
were disturbed at finding her an object of general 
homage. They came away joking nervously about 
the High Priestess, the Oracle, the Sibyl. No such 
need to ridicule a great influence afflicted these gen- 
tlemen, at the spectacle of reverence shown George 
Meredith — reverence so gladly paid by women as 
well as men. But we must forgive those gentlemen. 
Shakespeare himself could not resist belittling Joan 
of Arc. 

Men have one excuse for this sort of blindness 



248 WAY STATIONS 

which women have not. Women know that, advan- 
tageous as it may be to be born a man, it is a tre- 
mendously fine thing to be born a woman. This is 
the knowledge we must pass on to girls. I hear 
there are girls who hate so-called girls' books. They 
cannot have been given Miss Evelyn Sharp's. But 
why do they hate the ordinary girls' book? Because 
many a girl resents being put off with mere goody- 
goody, and variants of the Patient-Griselda theme. 
They like to hear about girls who feel as they them- 
selves feel, and who do some of the things they long 
to do. 

The average woman, too, takes an interest in 
other women, and in other women's achievements — 
an interest which, in the average man, seems largely 
confined to the love story. The woman likes the 
love story too. But she knows very well that isn't 
all there is to be said about a woman's life. 

We especially like hearing about people who have 
travelled our road. The woman in society makes 
such a run on a book like Lady St. Helier's " Recol- 
lections " that The Times' Club has to insert a 
pathetic little slip beseeching the reader to send 
back the volume at the earliest possible moment. If 
you are a member of a profession, no book has for 
you quite the same fascination as a book by, or about, 
a woman of the same craft. When I first began to 
be interested in the Stage I scoured the libraries for 
lives of actresses. But the biographies seemed to be 
nearly all about actors, and very poor when they 



THE WOMEN WRITERS 249 

weren't! Not till actresses took to writing their 
own lives did we have records of women in this art so 
illuminating, so masterly, as Fanny Kemble's " Rec- 
ollections." " The Life of Clara Morris," or that 
work of magic — where between the two boards of 
a book you shall find the charm, the poetry of a 
personality that made the English stage a place of 
enchantment during the reign of Ellen Terry. 
These, and books like them, are a foretaste of that 
library that waits to be written. 

I stood the other day thinking over these things 
before a boy's bookcase. Do that, any of you. You 
will feel afresh how well men have served their half 
of the world in this great matter of Suggestion. 
All those stirring stories, those high adventures, 
whether historic — like " The Life of Nelson " or 
" The Story of our Empire," whether Miss Yonge's 
" Greek Heroes " or tales like Stevenson's " Treasure 
Island," or Kipling's " Kim " ; and others, rows on 
rows ! 

Which, of all these boots, tells about a girl's 
courage, good temper, wit, resourcefulness, en- 
durance? Not one. Have these qualities, then, 
been lacking in our sex? We know the answer to 
that. These qualities were all there, but they had to 
wait for women themselves to celebrate them. 

I do not complain of men in this connection. We 
all write best what we know best. And in one way 
the untilled field is a piece of good fortune for the 
Women Writers of the future — the women who 



250 WAY STATIONS 

(among other things) are going to fulfil, at last, 
the ancient Euripidean prophecy of a day when the 
old bards' stories — 

" Of frail brides and faithless shall be shrivelled as with 
fire, 

And woman, yea, woman, shall be terrible in story. 
The tales, too, meseemeth, shall be other than of yore 
For a fear there is that cometh out of woman and a 

glory, 
And the hard hating voices shall encompass her no 

more." 

Fellow-members of the League, you have such a 
field as never writers had before. An almost virgin 
field. You are, in respect of life described fearlessly 
from the woman's standpoint — you are in that po- 
sition for which Chaucer has been so envied by his 
brother-poets, when they say he found the English 
language with the dew upon it. You find woman at 
the dawn. 

Critics have often said that women's men are 
badly drawn. Ladies, what shall we say of many of 
the girls drawn by men? I think we shall be safer 
not to say. But there she stands — the Real Girl ! 
- — waiting for you to do her justice. No mere 
chocolate-box " type," but a creature of infinite va- 
riety, of curiosities and ambitions, of joy in physical 
action, of high dreams of love and service, sharer in 
her brother's 



THE WOMEN WRITERS 251 

"... exultations, agonies, 
And man's unconquerable soul." 

The Great Adventure is before her. Your Great 
Adventure is to report her faithfully. So that her 
children's children reading her story shall be lifted 
up — proud and full of hope. " Of such stuff," 
they shall say, " our mothers were ! Sweethearts 
and wives — yes, and other things besides : leaders, 
discoverers, militants, fighting every form of wrong." 



TIME TABLE 

July, 1910 — June, 1911 

The " Antis " had an ally little suspected amongst the 
rank and file in either camp. 

Those persons who were relying on the avowed pro- 
Suffrage opinions of certain Cabinet Ministers received 
a rude shock in the course of the debate on the second 
reading of the Conciliation Bill, July 11th and 12th, 
1910. 

The measure was supported from the Government 
bench by Mr. Haldane and Mr. Runciman. From the 
Conservative side by Mr. Balfour, Mr. Alfred Lyttelton, 
and Lord Hugh Cecil. Among Labour men by Mr. 
Snowden, Mr. Keir Hardie, and Mr. Shackleton. Irish 
support was given by Mr. William Redmond and Mr. 
Kettle. The expected speeches from consistent Anti- 
Suffragist Members were coolly received in the House, 
and made little or no impression outside. But that can- 
not be said of two other contributions to the debate. To 
the unbounded delight of the Antis and the stupefaction 



252 WAY STATIONS 

of Suffragists, the frankly " Anti " Prime Minister was 
supported in his denunciation of the Bill (though osten- 
sibly on different grounds) by two Ministers calling 
themselves Suffragists. 

Mr. Winston Churchill, whose advance in understand- 
ing of the question had been so marked during the Dun- 
dee election, now 5 from his safe seat on the Government 
bench, spoke against the Bill. 

Rumours called " wild " were current on the eve of 
the debate to the effect that Mr. Lloyd George was not 
so well pleased with the Bill as the Conciliation Com- 
mittee thought they had reason to believe. But this idea 
was scouted even by persons not concerned to uphold the 
seriousness of Mr. Lloyd George's avowed convictions 
on the subject of Woman Suffrage. Among those who, 
upon whatever ground, believed in the principle, who 
better than Mr. Lloyd George would understand the im- 
portance of sustaining and utilising the hard-won unity 
of policy declared by the most active friends of Suffrage 
throughout the kingdom? Who better than Mr. Lloyd 
George could appreciate the tactical reasons for the 
moderation of the Bill? Who better realise the futility 
of trying to get a wider Bill through at this juncture? 
Who better know, if he had any right to call himself a 
Suffragist at all, the importance of not letting slip this 
best chance that had ever come of securing at least some 
sort of political recognition for women? Here more than 
anywhere in the political field, c'est le premier pas qui 
coute. 

Mr. Lloyd George did all in his power to kill the 
Conciliation Bill. He afterwards boasted publicly of 
his success. 

The weakening effect of Mr. Lloyd George's desertion 



THE WOMEN WRITERS 25S 

was less apparent in the immediate than in the secondary- 
results. The predisposition of the House in favour of 
the Bill was shown in the passing of the second reading 
by a large majority. 

Those who knew anything of the history of the Suf- 
frage question knew that the triumphant second reading 
was but one step, and not even a decisive one, on the 
way to serious dealing with the issue. Suffragists who 
still believed that Mr. Lloyd George had not given con- 
ciliation its death-blow, were much perplexed to see the 
poor Bill fall into one of those traps provided for the 
hopes of simple-minded reformers by " Parliamentary 
Procedure." Even persons whose business is to know 
this game — (none too dignified when used for gambling 
over issues of grave importance) — were beaten in the 
next round of " Parliamentary Procedure. " Some of 
the best-intentioned friends of the Conciliation Bill 
voted that the measure should now be discussed in the 
whole House, instead of being sent to a Grand Commit- 
tee. This vote was carried. Result: deadlock, unless 
the Government would " give time/' The Government, 
under the leadership of an Anti-Suffragist, naturally 
declined to give time. 

Great are the uses of Parliamentary Procedure. 

Every effort was made outside the Commons to induce 
Mr. Asquith to yield this point of " time." A great cam- 
paign was carried on throughout the country with the aim 
of consolidating, and making yet more evident, the grow- 
ing volume of opinion to the effect that the head of the 
Government, standing also as chief interpreter of the 
will of the people, should give heed to a demand so well 
and so widely supported. Though he should continue to 
ignore the wishes of women who were Suffragists, he 



254 WAY STATIONS 

might, they hoped, be induced to listen to the increasing 
number of men who were Suffragists — to the resolutions 
passed by the great civic corporations of Manchester, 
Liverpool, Bradford, Nottingham, Glasgow, Dundee, 
Dublin, Cork, and thirty more, calling on the Government 
to " give time " for the Women's Bill. 

The hopes raised by the support of these popularly 
elected bodies were dashed by the voice crying out in 
Wales against Conciliation. Not the Prime Minister 
himself was more concerned to defeat the Bill, which 
enjoyed the largest support ever given to a measure for 
enfranchising women, than the " Suffragist " Chancellor 
of the Exchequer. What effect Mr. Lloyd George's denun- 
ciations had upon the general public we cannot say. But 
we can speak for their effect upon the people who were 
working hardest, and caring most whole-heartedly, for 
the issues bound up in the political recognition of women. 
Realising Mr. Lloyd George's growing influence in the 
Cabinet, they began to recognise in him the chief obstacle 
to a peaceful solution of the Suffrage problem. Hopes 
of gaining their end by compromise, by conciliation, by 
truce, waned as the autumn wore on. The sense of un- 
easiness and suspense increased daily. At last, in re- 
sponse to pressure on the part of women in his constit- 
uency, Mr. Asquith received a small deputation in East 
Fife. All the encouragement he vouchsafed them was 
contained in the assurance that facilities for carrying for- 
ward the Conciliation Bill would certainly not be granted 
before the end of the year. When they pressed for 
something more definite than that, asking what they had to 
hope in the year to come, his answer was : " Wait and see." 

The Women's Social and Political Union felt that it 
had waited and seen enough. 



THE WOMEN WRITERS 255 

The truce was declared at an end. At the next Albert 
Hall meeting, in a few minutes, a sum of <£9,000 was 
subscribed to the new fighting fund. 

In the same month, November, 1910, the Liberal-Con- 
servative Conference publicly confessed its failure to 
arrive at an understanding. The quarrel between Lords 
and Commons was to be submitted almost at once to the 
test of a General Election. 

On the Friday after the assembling of Parliament 
(November 18th, 1910), Mr. Asquith outlined his pro- 
gramme. Those women, more patient than other Suffra- 
gists, eagerly listening for some word with regard to the 
political claims of their half of the world, heard the 
Prime Minister laying down one after another proposals 
intended to meet the wishes of electors. When would he 
remember the women? He found a place even for a pro- 
posal which the country had shown no eagerness for, and 
which many Members of the House of Commons (on 
divers grounds) had hotly opposed — a proposal to lay 
upon taxpayers the extra burden of payment of Members 
of Parliament — men whom women might not vote for 
or against, but would have to help to pay. No slightest 
reference to that portion of the public who were women. 
The nation might have been composed solely of men for 
all the consideration the Liberal Government deigned to 
show to women's special interests, their demands or their 
very existence. 

And what, all this time, was being done with the Con- 
ciliation Bill? It had been blessed by a majority made 
up of all parties, yet it had fallen out of the category 
of measures having power to achieve the sole end for 
which they were brought into oeing. Under the subtle 
disability of that spell " Parliamentary Procedure " it 



256 WAY STATIONS 

had mysteriously " gone lame." It was not fit, appar- 
ently, to enter the open lists. So successfully had it 
been hamstrung, that it made no perceptible struggle for 
a place in the programme of important measures. Its 
sponsors in Parliament seemed to have acquiesced in its 
being smuggled out of sight — at least for the time 
being. 

By observing how other Bills unwelcome to authority 
secured attention, women were beginning to realise there 
is only one fitting season for a measure of admitted 
urgency, and that is Now. 

In anticipation of Mr. Asquith's pronouncement of 
policy, the day that saw it made public saw the members 
of the Woman's Social and Political Union holding a 
public meeting. When they heard of the silence main- 
tained in Parliament on the subject of the Conciliation 
Bill, when they learned that the sole recognition of 
woman's existence was the tacit suggestion to levy a fresh 
tax upon them, the largest deputation yet despatched set 
out from Caxton Hall to the House of Commons — a 
via Dolorosa never to be forgotten either by the three 
hundred volunteers, or by other women in the throng 
threading Parliament Square and the tributary streets. 

The deputation had been divided into detachments, 
the first headed by Mrs. Pankhurst. Another bf a sister 
of Mrs. Fawcett, Dr. Garrett Anderson, twice Mayor 
of Aldeburgh. Her venerable face, lined and valiant, re- 
minded us of those battles long ago, when she had pio- 
neered a way for women into the medical profession just 
as, now at seventy years of age, she was prepared to 
pioneer a way for women which she could not hope herself 
to travel far — the broad highway of equal citizenship. 
Mrs. Cobden-Sanderson, the Hon. Mrs. Haverfield, and 



THE WOMEN WRITERS 257 

Princess Sophia Dhuleep Singh were amongst those lead- 
ing other groups. 

Many women not of the deputation, but concerned for 
it, yielded to the exhortation that they should " stand 
by/' or mingle with the crowd. Even these mere wit- 
nesses became quickly aware that a great draft of police 
new to this sort of exigency had been called out. They 
were perceived to be carrying into effect, with a ruthless 
unanimity, some new idea of how women on deputation 
to the Prime Minister should be treated. Instead of ar- 
resting them after a struggle, the instruction evidently 
was to use harsher measures than had ever yet been em- 
ployed in order to avoid the necessity of arrest. These 
inconvenient women were to be so terrorised that this 
deputation might be the last, and that the prisons might 
be relieved of a class of offender highly embarrassing 
alike to penal authority and to the Government. 

I am so far from being the person qualified to write 
the story of that day, I cannot even read the accounts 
(attested and sworn) by the women of character who 
were the chief actors — chief victims. I did not myself 
see the worst, but I saw enough to send me away sick 
and shuddering, after two hours spent in going through 
and about the vast crowds, taking back to Caxton Hall 
or to the nearest tea-shop, or giving for a few minutes 
the shelter of the cab to now one, now another woman, 
bruised, fainting, aghast. 

I have to set down this fact: I saw no one who had 
been out in the struggle that day who was not determined, 
the moment she got back breath and strength, to return to 
the others — those tragic figures still fruitlessly battling 
their way towards the Gate for Strangers. One woman was 
so hurt that we tried to get her away — long enough at 



258 WAY STATIONS 

least for a chance to recover. I thought we had suc- 
ceeded^ and was rejoicing at the police order to drive on, 
when a break in the crowd showed the vision of an old 
lady struggling among insulting faces. The woman in 
our cab, not young herself, broke from us, opened the 
door, and the last we saw of her she was fighting her way 
towards the older woman through the shouting, surging 
mass. No, not the last of her. The police had cleared 
a way and compelled our chauffeur to move on. But 
the woman's face kept following us; her words went on 
beating at our ears: " I didn't know ! Oh, I didn't know 
— until to-day ! " 

One hundred and fifteen women, persisting in the face 
of every brutality in trying to reach the Commons, were 
finally arrested. 

No wonder that those responsible for the action of the 
police that day shrank from seeing the true history of 
" Black Friday " exposed. A quite unprecedented course 
was initiated the next morning in the police-court. Every 
one of the hundred and fifteen prisoners was released, 
apparently in the hope that (being denied the chance of 
making public the facts attested by witness) the treat- 
ment to which the deputation had been subjected might 
never be known except to the perpetrators and their 
victims. 

In saying this one seems to record an impression of 
deliberate cruelty hardly human. Yet we know quite 
Well the cruelty could not have been as deliberate as it 
seemed. To have foreseen it in all its hideousness the 
instigators must have been men of imagination as well 
as fiends. I believe they were mere blunderers. I be- 
lieve they afterwards bitterly regretted the bad states- 
manship which devised this new way of evading their 



THE WOMEN WRITERS 259 

obligations — and that they shrank with a weakness en- 
tirely human from knowing more about the appalling 
result. Three years before, Authority had missed the 
one right way of successfully meeting the new need, and 
all this wild essaying, first one and then another wrong 
way, only bewildered overburdened wits and strained 
exasperated nerves. 

In nothing had the wrong way failed more signally 
than in the endeavour to terrorise women. That new 
knowledge of life and its meaning to others, the admis- 
sion made by the refugee of a moment springing out of 
the little haven of the cab, found witnesses in many a 
heart. Only perhaps through some such conflict could 
the sheltered learn the need of the shelterless, learn the 
contempt felt by Authority for women as a sex, the depth 
of the disrespect felt by the man in the street for the 
woman in the street. 

The implications in that lesson made the sufferings of 
Black Friday ministrant not to horrified self-pity, but 
to a new sense of sex solidarity, a new ideal of service 
to those who have not merely an hour or so of dis- 
respect to endure, but a lifetime. 

Three days after the great essay at terrorising women, 
yet another deputation renewed the attempt to interview 
the Prime Minister — waiting at Westminster till the 
House rose. The next day Mr. Asquith thought well to 
promise that he would give facilities in the new Parlia- 
ment for effectively proceeding with a Suffrage Bill so 
framed as to admit of free amendment. But he declined 
to say whether the opportunity, such as it was, would be 
given during the first year of the new Parliament. 

More at the moment than later the Women's Social and 
Political Union was blamed for not accepting Mr. As- 



260 



WAY STATIONS 



quith's promise as a valuable concession, and blamed for 
continuing militant acts which resulted in the arrest of 
one hundred and fifty-nine more women. 

At the General Election, which took place at the fag- 
end of the year 1910, the Woman's Social and Political 
Union consistently opposed the Government nominee. 
In ten constituencies where the women were active the 
Government lost. All the expense and dislocation of 
trade and of life in general, incident to a trial of party 
strength, resulted in the paltry gain of one additional 
Liberal seat. To contrast the results of this election 
with that of 1906, when the Liberals swept the country, 
was to form some idea of the fall in Liberal prestige. 

Meanwhile, others besides the leaders of the Women's 
Social and Political Union had reached the conclusion 
that Mr. Asquith's promise of some facility some day, 
was on examination a less explicit assurance than could 
be accepted by serious sponsors for a serious reform. 
The Conciliation Bill was resuscitated, and its scope 
somewhat modified in an endeavour to remove Mr. Lloyd 
George's objections. 

In May, at a debate on the second reading of the re- 
vised Bill, 2,55 members voting in favour brought in a 
majority of 167. Surely now, after these repeated en- 
dorsements, the Government would grant the necessary 
" further facilities " at no distant day. Yet distant it 
was to be. 

The year 1911 was yet young when Suffragists heard 
that the best facilities obtainable for going forward with 
the Bill were to take effect some time in 1912, 

The Militants prepared for protest. Under this spur 
some clarification of the promise was elicited with great 
difficulty. 



THE WOMEN WRITERS 261 

The Women's Social and Political Union turned from 
thoughts of immediate militancy to the work of organis- 
ing once more a popular demonstration of a nature 
entirely peaceful. 



XIV 

COME AND SEE* 

Within the next few days the world of London 
will be offered many stirring and picturesque sights. 
The press has heralded these happenings in thou- 
sands of columns for many weeks. We are reminded 
twenty times a day of the great shows and cere- 
monies that will attend the Coronation of a King. 
We walk the changed streets seeing on every side 
signs of preparation, in some cases unbeautiful 
enough, wiping out the ancient landmarks in the 
fervour of preparation for the populace to " Come 
and See " ! 

To see what? Not alone the ceremonies attend- 
ant on the crowning of the King, but an object- 
lesson in the power and dignity of Imperial manhood. 
No one who has looked on any similar scene but has 
brought away an impression less of homage to a 
peaceful Ruler, and to the triumph of a humane 
civilisation, than of a splendidly barbaric Pageant 
of militarism. Even in the funeral rites of the 
Peacemaker this note was struck to shrillness. In 
the two Coronation processions of next week amongst 
all those glittering masses of men will be one woman 

* The Coronation Suffrage Pageant. Reprinted from the 
Westminster Gazette of June 16, 1911. 

262 



COME AND SEE 263 

— a somewhat lonely figure, with her handful of at- 
tendant ladies — for the rest, the Royal show might 
faithfully be summed up as a Pageant of Arms and 
the Man. 

Yet in the Empire there are other arms, protective, 
not destructive; arms which have helped to build 
this Greatness — arms which have upborne each one 
of those who bear the sceptre, mace, and sword. 
That army behind the army is given little space and 
scant remembering in the Royal Pageant — and yet 
is half the Empire. 

Happily civilisation has brought His Majesty's 
country so far that King George's Coronation week 
will not go by without some sign from that for- 
gotten host of a consciousness of duty and high 
destiny. 

The preparation for this Act of Faith, and of 
public spirit on the part of women, has been carried 
on with a misleading quietness. For this, no grand 
stands cover the London turf, no vast scaffolding 
hides Abbey, or Church, or ancient monument. A 
brief paragraph in a paper here and there is all the 
outside world has seen of the preparation for what 
will be a sight without a parallel. 

So far as Royal pageants go, the eyes that saw 
the Jubilee can hardly expect to find that spectacle 
surpassed. But no eye will have seen anything like 
the Woman's Pageant of to-morrow. 

Though individual societies, representing women's 
various activities and political creeds, have shown 



264 WAY STATIONS 

their strength before in the London streets, never 
before have so many of these associations united 
in anything like such numbers, or with anything 
approaching such enthusiasm. But that is not all. 
The Woman's Procession, projected, guided, mar- 
shalled by British women, has grown to be of inter- 
national interest, and is certain therefore to make 
its appeal to the stranger within the gate. 

No European country but is represented in the 
ranks. One great feature of this demonstration is 
the spontaneous generosity it has evoked. I visited 
three of the places in different parts of London 
where the work of preparation was being carried 
on. I found rooms full of volunteer artists bent 
over historical designs ; yet other rooms full of 
volunteers carrying out the plans, women cutting 
fabrics, women sewing, women stencilling banners, 
gilding emblems. The hours are long in these places 
where the preparations go forward. But the women 
who work longest are the women who have the 
privilege (as some think it) to play all the time, if 
they prefer. Women who have never worked hard 
before have been working for the Pageant these 
hot June days, from eight in the morning till ten at 
night. 

One of the people new to this sort of strain ex- 
plained the secret of her steadfastness : " When I 
think I am too tired to do any more, I remember 
those other women who are not working voluntarily, 



COME AND SEE 265 

just once in a lifetime. Thinking of those sweated 
women keeps me at it. 5 ' 

Some of the most exacting work consists in guid- 
ing the services of the undisciplined and the vague. 
The supreme difficulty has been at times to keep 
a straight face — as before the handsome offer of 

Miss , who is " willing to be one of the Queens, 

if you have any left over." 

Some of the dressmakers in a small way of business 
have been among the best and most generous helpers, 
ready to give time and skill, " out of pure devotion," 
some say. Others say, out of sad knowledge of the 
need of this thing, the Pageant stands for. These 
and other helpers who will not appear to-morrow, 
will be in many minds as " the Queens " go by. 

At the head of the main section (stretching from 
Blackfriars Bridge to Charing Cross) "General" 
Drummond will ride in front of the Colour-Bearer, 
and behind her Miss Annan Bryce, in the silver 
armour of Jeanne d'Arc. Then will come a sym- 
bolic group of New Crusaders, followed by musicians. 
Then the leaders of the Women's Social and Political 
Union, and in their train that strange portent, the 
body of women, seven hundred strong, who have en- 
dured imprisonment in the struggle for citizenship. 
After another band of musicians will come an Histor- 
ical Pageant, led by a figure representing Abbess 
Hilda, the Founder of the Benedictine Monastery of 
Whitby, followed by Peeresses summoned to Parlia- 



266 WAY STATIONS 

ment in the reign of Edward III, women-Governors, 
Custodians of castles, women-burgesses, historically 
verified as of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, free- 
women of various guilds and corporations, followed 
by the formally disfranchised women of 1832 and 
after. Much thought and care has been given to the 
Empire Car, whereon are seated two figures repre- 
senting East and West. Over their heads is the 
Emperor-King's roof-tree, and at their feet symbolic 
presentments of the various dependencies and colo- 
nies. But that the writers' section claims Mrs. 
Flora Annie Steele, she might have represented Brit- 
ish India, since no less an authority than Mr. Rud- 
yard Kipling has said of her acquaintance with the 
East : " She knows it all as well as I." Before 
and behind the car, and linking all together in rose- 
chains, are the bearers of the staves, which are sur- 
mounted by emblems of the Kingdom and the Empire. 
The Scottish Contingent brings women-pipers in 
Highland dress; Wales brings her singers and Ire- 
land her women in Colleen Bawn cloaks, carrying 
gilded harps. 

More music, and then, after thirty-one of the 
branches of the W.S.P.U., come the Imperial Con- 
tingents. After them the International Groups — 
led by the Americans in recognition of our common 
tongue and blood. 

In the Finnish Society, marching behind their 
beautiful silk banner, will be Madame Malmberg 
and other Finnish ladies in national costume. Other 



COME AND SEE 267 

countries have sent women distinguished in art, in 
science, and in law. 

The Conservative and Unionist Women's Franchise 
Association precedes the Pageant of Queens. After 
them comes the New Constitutional Society. Then 
the Actresses, led by Hedda Gabler, in the accom- 
plished person of the Princess Bariatinsky on horse- 
back. The President, Mrs. Forbes Robertson, and 
the members of the Actresses' League will follow. 

After these come the women-musicians, under the 
leadership of Dr. Ethel Smyth, to whose inspiring 
music all the many feet will march. 

Mrs. Despard and the officials and members of 
the Women's Freedom League are followed by the 
various Church Leagues and the Catholic Women's 
Suffrage Society. 

From the other direction, coming up Whitehall, 
Mrs. Fawcett, in her doctor's robes, leading the Na- 
tional Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, will be 
joined by the University sections. 

From Westminster Bridge to Northumberland 
Avenue will stretch a further detachment headed 
by the Women Writers. After the artists, the Fa- 
bian group, nurses, gardeners, the great body of 
teachers, and women in business, twenty-nine more 
branches of the W.S.P.U., and the various men's 
societies. 

I find it impossible even to enumerate all the 
groups, let alone describe them, a reason the more 
why this Pageant should be seen. Another and a 



268 WAY STATIONS 

most excellent reason is that it will present aspects 
of uncommon beauty. The third reason it should 
be seen is that this procession will be significant be- 
yond any, even in this memorable work. Here will be 
the greatest gathering of women the world has ever 
seen in the world's greatest city. Four miles of 
women marching toward one goal. Many of them 
have not come lightly by the power to do this thing 
the public will be looking at to-morrow. Those who 
have marched before have noticed many a woman 
looking out of windows with troubled eyes at the 
regiments going by in the mud or the dust of London 
streets. Hundreds of those who last year watched 
the others will be found to-morrow among the 
marchers. 

That is one of the significant things about this 
army. Always it is greater than before. And for 
all the " roses, roses," that wreathe the cars and 
festoon the six hundred emblem-crowned staves, for 
all the music and the smiling, always this army is at 
heart a graver host ; ready for service, and, if need 
be, for suffering. Heaven send that one aspect of 
the old need is past. A Liberal editor wrote last 
week of the Coronation rite : " Let us admit that 
when men took it seriously it was a noble tribute to 
the Liberal faith that refuses to base authority on 
force. 55 

The great act of peace and public profession of 
faith that will be offered to-morrow, must go far 
to show the idleness of attempting, any longer, to 



COME AND SEE 269 

maintain that enough women are not enough in 
earnest about the idea that sets this procession 
marching through the London streets. 

TIME TABLE 

June 16, 1911 — October 23, 1911 

During the summer and autumn of 1911 the peaceful 
propaganda in support of the Conciliation Bill went for- 
ward vigorously and uninterruptedly — so far as Suf- 
fragists were concerned. All was harmony, except when 
Mr. Lloyd George sounded from time to time a jarring 
note. He urged the Parliamentary Committee of Lib- 
eral Suffragists to ballot for a wider measure, and to 
claim that the promise of " a week in 1912/' won with 
such difficulty from the Prime Minister, should apply to 
a measure embodying the widening amendments. Chal- 
lenged in the House about this, Mr. Lloyd George said 
that the Prime Minister's promise did not refer strictly 
and solely to the Conciliation Bill, but to any Bill with 
an open title. The drift of this was clearly seen by 
those who were genuine Suffragists. A vigorous protest 
was made against this devious manipulation of a pledge 
obtained for a different use and a more practical end. 
So great was the outcry against the threatened contra- 
vention of the spirit of the Prime Minister's undertak- 
ing, that Mr. Asquith was obliged to step into the breach 
made by the Chancellor. In a public letter to the 
Chairman of the Conciliation Committee (Lord Lytton) 
the Prime Minister repudiated the construction put upon 
his words by Mr. Lloyd George, reiterated the pledge, 
and said it applied, as Suffragists supposed, to the Con- 



270 WAY STATIONS 

ciliation Bill, and to that Bill alone. But the attempt to 
divert a promise from the service of a measure on whose 
behalf it could be of use, to a measure too unwieldy to 
save, inspired a profound uneasiness in those who had 
worked tirelessly for the Conciliation Bill, and waited 
long and patiently to see it given a chance. 



XV 
CROWBOROUGH, SUSSEX * 

Lady Brassey, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

We have come to a point at which the older sup- 
porters of Women's Suffrage — going about among 
the towns and villages of England — see on every 
side a legion of new friends flocking to the standard. 
Less and less are the principles underlying this 
reform denied, or even seriously questioned, by the 
general public. Of course, if there is anyone here 
to-night who wishes to be told the grounds for the 
faith that is in us — he or she will have an oppor- 
tunity during the evening to put questions. 

As a rule, we find that the general public has now 
accepted the principle that Taxation without Repre- 
sentation is Tyranny; that wisdom is not confined 
to one sex, and that even more than women are in 
need of a direct relation to politics — politics, civ- 
ilised society in general, is in need of the direct co- 
operation of women. 

You might suppose, since these views are now 
shared by such great numbers, that the persons 
most interested in this reform might rest on their 
oars. But never in all these five years' struggle 
has there been so great a need as now for vigilance, 
*At Crowborough, Sussex, Oct. 23, 1911. 



272 WAY STATIONS 

and for active aid, in guiding the Suffrage ship to 
port. As I have said, where we had a handful of 
friends — we count now a host. But the task of 
Suffragists, though immensely more popular and 
hopeful, is not, as you might suppose, simplified. 
Rather, it is complicated. In the hour of victory 
it is imperilled by the fact that, instead of our more 
formidable enemies being amongst open opponents, 
the most insidious are found among the so-called 
friends of the Suffrage. The danger to public wel- 
fare that comes of eliminating the woman's point of 
view — the half- view inevitable to the exclusively 
masculine view - — was never more apparent than in 
the way in which some of our so-called friends ap- 
proach this great question. Certain members of the 
Government are, as you know, unwilling to be ac- 
counted enemies of Women's Suffrage. But they 
seem unwilling to give the time and trouble neces- 
sary to a thorough understanding of the matter, 
and they will not take from women the women's view 
of the Women's Bill. Those members of the Gov- 
ernment whom we have in mind spend all their best 
energies upon other issues. Then they turn to our 
leaders, and as much as say : " It is true that we 
give the smallest possible attention to this Suffrage 
question — but with that mere fragment of our mind 
we easily come to the conclusion that we don't agree 
with those of you who for years have made the 
Suffrage your main study." " I think nothing," 
says Mr. Lloyd George, " of the findings of your 



CROWBOROUGH, SUSSEX 273 

Conciliation Committee. Why, your Bill doesn't en- 
franchise a single woman solely on the ground that 
she is married to a qualified voter." 

Now, no man has ever expected to be enfranchised 
because he was married. But Mr. Lloyd George 
will not support our Bill unless it submits to some 
such amendment — an amendment which would bring 
in something like seven millions as compared with 
the one million the Bill provides for. 

Mr. Lloyd George and those politicians of his 
way of thinking — they are few, we are glad to think 
— have been content, from the day they entered pub- 
lic life up to a few months ago, that wives should 
go voteless. Now these gentlemen suddenly wake up 
and say with horror : " Here is a Bill which leaves 
out many of the wives ! It is monstrous ! " 

The married Suffragists themselves have hardly 
recovered from their surprise at this unexpected and 
inopportune championship when along comes Mr. 
Birrell. Mr. Birrell says, in that genial way of 
his : " Of course, widows and spinsters ought to 
have the vote. The one thing I bar is that married 
women should be given a vote." To neither of these 
gentlemen does it seem to occur that if woman's 
voice is desirable in public affairs — that voice 
should be listened to when it says : " We have looked 
over every inch of this ground, and we find the only 
path by which women can go forward is the path 
pointed out by the Conciliation Bill." 

We are proud to think that neither the spinster, 



274 WAY STATIONS 

the widow, nor the married woman has ever tried to 
limit her demand for Women's Suffrage by the con- 
ditions of her own private relationships. We find, 
not Cabinet Ministers, but the Women Suffragists, 
able to lay aside the individual advantage for sake 
of the larger good. While men of Mr. Lloyd 
George's way of thinking on this question show their 
inability to look at the matter from the point of 
view of Woman Suffrage as a whole, the Suffragists 
as a whole say: The individual woman can wait. 
Even the special class can wait. What cannot wait 
is the ratifying of the principle. 

After an immense amount of hard work, of dis- 
cussion and adjustment, the Conciliation Bill has 
been evolved and endorsed by the strongest, most 
whole-hearted friends of this reform. No other Bill 
could hope to unite so many in support of its third 
reading. Yet this is the Bill Mr. Lloyd George so 
lightly asks us to imperil by widening amendments, 
which would wreck its chances. Women of all par- 
ties, women married or single, rich or poor, are able 
to distinguish that advantage in the Conciliation Bill 
which the Chancellor's eyes cannot discern. 

Our Bill is the true " Toleration Act," which is the 
name Mr. Lloyd George has given his Insurance 
Bill. Speaking at Holborn on Friday night of the 
difficulties he had to surmount, admitting his Bill 
to be a compromise, he said his purpose had been 
to get people into the same Tabernacle, to worship 
and to work together for at least one particular 



CROWBOROUGH, SUSSEX 275 

object. That course describes to a nicety the pro- 
ceedings of the Conciliation Committee, and the at- 
titude of Suffragists towards the Bill. The Bill is 
the carefully and rigorously considered basis of 
agreement amongst Suffragists of all parties. No 
Cabinet Minister calling himself a Suffragist, who 
yet rejects this Bill, but will lay upon himself a 
heavy, a most unenviable, responsibility. 



TIME TABLE 

October, 1911 — March 7, 1912 

There were many, both in and out of Suffrage ranks, 
ready to tell the Militants that their open mistrust of 
Mr. Lloyd George was both groundless and impolitic. 
They would feel ashamed when they saw how well he 
meant by them! 

Meanwhile, if the action, or inaction, of certain cham- 
pions of longer standing wore an equivocal air, new allies, 
about whom no doubts could be entertained, had sprung 
up on every side. The Lord Mayor of Dublin, in pur- 
suance of an ancient right, had appeared at the bar of 
the House of Commons to plead with the Government 
on behalf of the women. All over the kingdom County 
Councils, to a number which had risen from thirty odd 
to over a hundred, were sending resolutions to the Prime 
Minister, calling upon the Government to deal fairly 
and promptly with the Suffrage Bill. 

And so it was that the beginning of November, 1911, 
founr^. Suffragists of all societies full of hope. The 
busy months of peaceful propaganda had shown them 



276 WAY STATIONS 

how great a body of adherents, hitherto unsuspected, had 
been won over to the Cause. 

The Anti-Suffragist faction in the Cabinet found it- 
self hard-pressed. That circumstance alone can account 
for what followed. 

Let us remember that at this time, still hoping the 
revised Conciliation Bill would pass, militancy was hold- 
ing its hand. Friends of Mr. Lloyd George were not 
satisfied. Militancy must also hold its tongue. They 
did not explain how, if the Militants were wrong about 
the Chancellor, he should have exhibited, not once or 
twice, but consistently, a maladroitness in dealing with 
the Suffrage not discoverable in his other public activi- 
ties. Friends of the Chancellor, unable to explain this 
fact away, nevertheless, urged that Suffragists, for their 
own sake, should cease to sharpen their tongues upon an 
invaluable, an indispensable ally — the one and only per- 
son who could (and who, if Militants had prettier man- 
ners, would) engineer a Suffrage Bill in all its stages 
through the House of Commons. That a genuine Suf- 
fragist would not do this (if he had the power), how- 
ever much one group of people doubted him, was a hard 
saying. And still it was carried to the proper source. 
It was urged through two hours of private conference. 
A compromise was at length effected — a peace (extend- 
ing to the very point of the militant tongue) was to ob- 
tain for a given length of time, in order that in the 
interim, undisturbed even by verbal attacks, Mr. Lloyd 
George might exercise his miraculous powers upon the 
Cabinet and in the House of Commons to the end that he, 
the one man who could, might get Votes for Women." 

While the arch-Militant and the intermediary sat in 



CROWBOROUGH, SUSSEX 277 

a London club framing the conditions which should leave 
the Chancellor free even from verbal distractions, free to 
work his miracles of personal influence — outside the 
club windows newsboys were calling in the street, " Man- 
hood Suffrage Bill/ 9 

It was true. The friend of Woman Suffrage had ac- 
quiesced in, if he had not engineered, this disaster to 
Conciliation. 

The enemies of Suffrage threw their caps in the air 
and danced for joy. Staunch supporters of the Liberal 
Government like the " Westminster Gazette " said that, 
though the Prime Minister's pledge still stood good, " it 
is obvious that the situation is profoundly altered." 

"The Times" spoke of "the mine exploded under the so- 
called Conciliation Bill." " That Bill the Suffragists hoped to 
carry through the House, in which a large number of members 
are hampered by pledges hastily given to obviate opposition, 
and perhaps now viewed with regret. They are all provided 
now with an excellent excuse for doing nothing; for it is obvi- 
ous that if a truly democratic Woman Suffrage measure is to 
be in the hands of the House next session, it would be absurd 
to waste time in tinkering the question. On the other hand, 
Adult Woman Suffrage is not what many ardent Suffragists 
desire, and there is the further possibility that the House of 
Commons may recoil from a wholesale creation of feminine 
votes." 

The " Evening Standard " said of Mr. Asquith and 
his section of the Cabinet: 

"Their new scheme enables them to put the advocates of 
the Conciliation Bill in a dilemma." ..." Then our clever 
lawyer-Premier (with him the equally astute attorney from 
Carnarvon) has them in his cleft stick. You want women to 
have the vote? Then give it to the ten millions! You don't 



278 WAY STATIONS 

want the ten millions to have it? Then your qualified million 
shall not have it either. So certain persons of both sexes who 
have defied and annoyed Messrs. Asquith, Lloyd George, and 
Winston Churchill are 'had' either way." 

The "Evening News" said: 

"The advocates of Women's Suffrage will, of course, be 
furious. Mr. Asquith's bombshell will blow the Conciliation 
Bill to smithereens, for it is cleanly impossible to have Man- 
hood Suffrage for men and a property qualification for women. 
True, the Premier consents to leave the question of Woman- 
hood Suffrage to the House, but he knows well enough what 
the decision of the House will be. The Conciliation Bill had 
a chance, but the larger measure has none at all." 

The "Globe" said: 

" It is not improbable that the most cogent reason for the 
introduction of Manhood Suffrage is to- be found in the fact 
that the Cabinet is all. at sixes and sevens over what is rather 
grotesquely known as the Conciliation Bill." . . . "We are 
no friends to Female Suffrage, but anything more contempti- 
ble than the attitude assumed by the Government it is difficult 
to imagine." 

The provincial press echoed the voices of the Metropo- 
lis. 

" The Government have certainly dealt a deadly blow 
at the Woman's Suffrage Movement in Parliament/' said 
the "Yorkshire Post." 

In the midst of this chorus the voice speaking through 
" Votes for Women " sounded almost tame : 

" In spite of the fact that there is an agitation for giving 
votes to women which is national in its scope and unprece- 
dented in its magnitude, and that there is no agitation for 
Manhood Suffrage, the Government are proposing to give 
more votes to men and none to women." ..." By associ- 
ating Votes for Women with the policy of Manhood Suffrage 



CROWBOROUGH, SUSSEX 279 

the Government have made it a party question, while at the 
same time they refuse to make it a party measure." . . . 
" The Manhood Suffrage Bill is simply an expedient for wreck- 
ing Woman Suffrage and building up a solid wall against the 
enfranchisement of women. The Manhood Suffrage Bill is 
not the answer to a demand for votes for men; it is the 
answer to the demand for votes for women." 

We do not forget there were those calling themselves, 
even thinking themselves, Suffragists, who said that the 
consternation of the women was without ground, since 
they had now two chances. But the people in whom 
great caring had cleared the vision, saw that the Govern- 
ment's move had lost for Woman Suffrage its Unionist 
and Moderate Liberal support; and realised, moreover, 
that a mere amendment not backed by the Government 
must also be lost for reasons having nothing to do with 
favour or disfavour towards Woman Suffrage, and every- 
thing to do with keeping contentious measures out of the 
path of Home Rule. 

A call went out from the Militant Headquarters sum- 
moning women to meet at Caxton Hall on November 21, 
and to volunteer for a deputation which should en- 
deavour to interview the Prime Minister and the Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer, and to lay before them the 
views held by a large section of women in respect of the 
new crisis which the Government had precipitated. 

A letter signed by one of the chief officers of the 
Union (Mrs. Pethick Lawrence) acquainted the Prime 
Minister with this design. On six previous occasions the 
same sort of communication had been made, and had 
been either evaded, or ignored, with the now well-known 
consequences. Moved, apparently, by the storm of indig- 
nation which had greeted the Government's franchise 



280 WAY STATIONS 

proposal, the Prime Minister replied to Mrs. Lawrence's 
letter. He stated that he and the Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer had arranged to receive a deputation from vari- 
ous Suffrage Societies on November 17> and would like 
to know " whether it is the intention of your society to 
be represented. " The reply was, of course, in the af- 
firmative. On the day appointed half a dozen members 
of the W.S.P.U., with Mrs. Lawrence and Miss Chris- 
tabel Pankhurst as spokeswomen for the Union, appeared 
with the deputation received at Downing Street. Rep- 
resentatives of Constitutional Societies adopted, as usual, 
a more conciliatory tone, but the majority of the women 
present at the interview left Downing Street under a 
sense of profound discouragement. They asked them- 
selves what less (in view of his publicly given pledge), 
could the Prime Minister have said than he did say? 
His speech in reply to the various delegates left the sub- 
ject precisely where he found it — in very evil case. 
For persons not content to see Woman Suffrage so left, 
the question was: What next? 

All the previous meetings, the campaigns of peaceful 
propaganda had not been noticed by (were perhaps not 
even known to) a Government which considered a polit- 
ical abuse unworthy of serious attention unless such* 
abuse presses upon electors. The Prime Minister's step 
into the hornet's nest of Manhood Suffrage the previous 
week, was the final proof of how little the Government 
was in touch with a great section of public feeling on 
the Woman Question. Personally, I am quite sure that 
had he foreseen the effect of that step, he would not have 
taken it at so critical a moment. He reminded the Depu- 
tation that he had said the same thing about Franchise 
Reform three and a half years ago. But three and a 



CROWBOROUGH, SUSSEX 281 

half years ago the threatened injustice was three and a 
half years distant, instead of imminent. Above all, 
three and a half years ago there was no Conciliation Bill 
towards which he had assumed responsibilities to be ful- 
filled " in the letter and in the spirit." That the un- 
timely revival of a Manhood Suffrage Bill at this 
particular crisis had changed the whole aspect of the 
Women's Franchise struggle was attested by the public 
utterances of Suffragists and of Anti-Suffragists of all 
parties. As witness: the finding of " The Parliamentary 
Committee for Adult Suffrage/' that of the <€ Unionist 
Members of Parliament opposed to Woman Suffrage," 
that of the " New Constitutional Society for Woman 
Suffrage "; attested, too, by Mrs. Humphry Ward, speak- 
ing at Salisbury "against"; by Lord Robert Cecil, 
speaking at Hitchin " for " ; by Mr. Ramsay McDonald ; 
by Sir J. Rees, and a cloud of other witnesses. 

In the face of all this, I repeat that I am certain the 
Prime Minister did not fully realise when he made his 
Manhood Suffrage pronouncement that he was acting 
contrary to the spirit of his pledge to us — another of 
the many proofs that, to the importance and the urgency 
of the Woman Suffrage claim, no clear and consistent 
thinking has been brought by the Government. 

The fact that the Prime Minister had changed the 
face of affairs he himself tacitly admitted when, in the 
House a few days earlier (and again to the deputation), 
he spoke of the Conciliation Bill as a measure whose very 
promoters might now not care to press — - this Bill, to 
safeguard and to serve which, every Suffrage Society in 
the kingdom has strained every nerve for many, many 
months ! 

Who could hope that our audience of the Prime Min- 



282 WAY STATIONS 

ister had helped us ? He said that he was impressed by 
the speeches. But to impress even such a past master 
as the Prime Minister with a capacity to make good 
speeches was not the aim of those who spoke. 

With unwillingness, with profound regret, many of us 
realised that morning that more had been done to win 
understanding and effectual support for Woman Suf- 
frage by those companies of women who from time to 
time had set off to Westminster, and who did not see the 
Prime Minister, than was accomplished to-day by those 
who did see him. 

For it was an open secret that although the Bill, to 
which the Government had been induced to promise fa- 
cilities, went out to the world under the names of a 
committee of men, its immediate authors were Mrs. 
Brailsford and Lady Constance Lytton. The spirit that 
breathed the breath of life into the Conciliation Bill was 
not born in a committee room. It was born in the tur- 
moil of the street, and nurtured in the solitude of prison. 

Women had waited in vain to hear through the chorus 
of indignation against the Manhood Suffrage measure 
any voice raised in their behalf among those in power. 
The silence of their friends was said to be the result of 
the tradition of Cabinet solidarity. Ministers must ap- 
parently endorse even those acts which they deplore. 
Now to do that seems to the simple feminine mind a mis- 
use, a debasement of loyalty. But if " Cabinet solidar- 
ity " had this numbing effect upon our official champions, 
all the more imperative, in some women's ears, sounded 
the question: What shall we do next? The answer given 
by the W.S.P.U. was reiteration of the call to a public 
meeting on the following Tuesday. 

Several hundred members of the W.S.P.U., being per- 



CROWBOROUGH, SUSSEX 283 

suaded of the serviceability of an unprecedented demon- 
stration of the resentment roused by the Manhood Suf- 
frage Bill, went out from Caxton Hall on November 21st 
and smashed official windows in Whitehall and elsewhere. 

Two hundred and twenty women and three men were 
arrested. A great deal of ink was spilt, and much breath 
wasted., in misrepresenting the cause of the raid and the 
character of the raiders. 

The problem for non-raiders thereupon changed its 
face. It became: How shall those of us who acted ac- 
cording to our best light in abstaining, avoid the pitfall 
of justifying ourselves by dint of condemning others 
who acted according to their best light in joining the 
raid? 

No people should be so careful as Suffragists to avoid 
the mistake of demanding a uniformity of thought and 
policy amongst women which no one requires (or, at least, 
has ever got) from the opposite sex. If women are to 
be left free to follow as various lines of faith and works 
as men are, then women must also be left free to pursue 
the ultimate goal in whatever way best accords with in- 
dividual character and experience. If she is wrong, she 
pays her penalty. Sometimes she pays her penalty if 
she is right. Needless to say, the Suffragette raiders 
paid heavily in the courts, in the prisons, in the press. 

In face of the judgments on the women, far harsher 
than those pronounced upon men doing infinitely more 
damage under infinitely less provocation, witness-bearing 
became the duty of those women who had not broken win- 
dows, but who were under no misunderstanding about 
the motives of the women who had done so. One of the 
wisest commentaries on the event came from outside the 
Union. Speaking of the latest window-smashing raid, 



284 WAY STATIONS 

Lady Betty Balfour said : " It has nothing in common 
with hooliganism or mere rebellion for selfish ends. It 
can never constitute a danger to the State, even if it 
should lead to bloodshed, because the essence of it is 
the existence of a spirit without which no State could 
continue to be great and influential . . ." 

Meanwhile, the pledges given by Suffragist members 
of the Cabinet to keep the Constitutionals quiet, in par- 
ticular the wide publicity given to the promise of certain 
Ministers that they would make a great campaign for 
Woman Suffrage throughout the country — began to 
have an effect upon the atmosphere of the Cabinet. 
Posters proclaimed " A Cabinet Crisis over Votes for 
Women." " The Suffrage question/' said one paper, 
" may represent the Waterloo of Mr. Asquith's career/' 
The " Daily Telegraph " said : " There is deep misgiv- 
ing as to the probable effect of this momentous question 
upon Ministerial fortunes." In the opinion of the 
" Evening Times " " the division in the Cabinet may lead 
to the break-up of the Radical party." 

Then it was that persons calling themselves friends of 
the Suffrage, but chiefly concerned to rescue the Prime 
Minister from his difficulty, suggested the Referendum as 
a way out of the difficulty. This device, when previously 
urged as a means of settling questions dear to the hearts 
of politicians, had been hotly denounced. The widespread 
future use of the Referendum seems not unlikely to com- 
mend itself. But the machinery by which it is to work 
is yet to be tried in England. Neither Liberal nor Con- 
servative Government has yet applied it to any party 
measure. That it should have been seriously considered 
as a means of easing the Suffrage tension was merely 
one more proof of the difficulty politicians find in apply- 



CROWBOROUGH, SUSSEX 285 

ing to so-called " woman's affairs " the same arguments 
and principles which they apply to measures initiated by 
men. 

The suggestion of introducing this untried device fur- 
ther to entangle and delay Woman Suffrage increased 
rather than lessened the tension, and not only as between 
the practical and the theoretical Suffragists. 

The "Pall Mall Gazette " said: 

" The cloud, no bigger than a woman's hand, that her- 
alded a depression which has since overspread the whole 
Ministerial host, has developed a chilly and paralysing 
atmosphere that has found its way into the innermost 
recesses of No. 10 Downing Street." 

The " Observer " reiterated its view 
" that from the Suffrage imbroglio none but a damaging 
exit is possible, and that this problem is bound to exert 
a stronger influence upon political deatinies than is yet 
even remotely realised by most politicians/' 

" The Times," in all the solemnity of a leading arti- 
cle, had said: 

" It is daily becoming more evident that the question 
of Woman Suffrage threatens to produce an acute polit- 
ical crisis." 

But not at all. A man might risk the life of a min- 
istry for Home Rule; he might leave the Cabinet on a 
question of Tariff Reform; but what was Woman Suf- 
frage that a Minister should put himself out for that! 

Through the medium of the King's Speech the Gov- 
ernment, in February, reiterated its determination to pro- 
ceed with the programme of Franchise amendment and 
the Registration of Electors. This might be construed 
so as to cover the Manhood Suffrage proposals, or merely 
a Plural Voting Bill. No one could pretend it had any- 



286 WAY STATIONS 

thing to do with Government responsibility towards 
women. 

Yet, as Mr. Lloyd George had admitted, if women 
were to vote at the next General Election, their Bill 
must needs be carried in this session in order to secure 
the benefit of the Parliament Act. 

Spring had come without bringing any serious at- 
tempt by persons in power to advance the Woman's 
Cause. Many Suffragists who had refrained from join- 
ing the demonstration of the previous November, came, 
in February, to feel that a sign must be given of their 
dissatisfaction with an advocacy so tepid, a championship 
so easily discouraged. 

On March 1st a Suffrage raid resulted in the destruc- 
tion of thousands of pounds' worth of plate-glass, and in 
the arrest of Mrs. Pankhurst and of over a hundred other 
women. On the following evening a vast crowd re- 
sponded to the women's invitation bidding the populace 
to Parliament Square. The police were prepared for 
this demonstration, of which full notice had been given. 
Nevertheless, further damage was done to property. 
More women were arrested. Nearly two hundred were 
now in prison. The treatment meted out to these polit- 
ical offenders in the courts and in the gaols, the fact 
that many women were permanently disabled and a man- 
Suffragist imprisoned in Pentonville had been driven 
insane by forcible feeding, threw into sharper relief the 
treatment meted out to disturbers of the peace who were 
not advocates of Woman Suffrage. The historian of the 
future will hardly find ground for surprise in setting 
down the fact that in the face of all this the temper of 
the Militants was hardening. A change in the character 



CROWBOROUGH, SUSSEX 287 

of their protests, which had been indicated in November, 
became yet more marked in March. Cabinet Ministers 
went about the country under a greater vigilance of police 
protection. 



XVI 

LETTER TO "THE TIMES"* 

To the Editor: 

Sir, Among the mass of printed comment from 
Anti-Suffrage sources which has come under one's 
eyes in the last six years, your leader of yesterday is 
probably the most enlightened. Here at last we have 
a consideration of causes, not merely of symptoms. 

You will not find all men agree that " when en- 
thusiasm brings about a tragedy, there is some error 
latent in it, however fine its cause may be." To agree 
to this would be to admit that nothing the world has 
gained has been worth its price of sorrow. The 
truth seems to be that the greater good may seldom, 
in an imperfect world, be bought with any other coin. 
The amount of attendant tragedy is, we admit, a 
measure of imperfection. But not always in the en- 
thusiasm. History shows how the sorrier imperfec- 
tions have been exhibited in the means employed to 
kill enthusiasm. The harsher means have always 
failed, when the enthusiasm was great enough in 
enough people to face obloquy and suffering. 

Since you, sir, are not blind to some of the subtler 
forces behind the Suffrage agitation, can you not 
help to make clear the fact that, whether for good, as 
* March 7, 1911. 

288 



LETTER TO " THE TIMES" 289 

we think, or for ill, the Woman Suffrage Movement 
has tapped those deep reservoirs of spiritual devo- 
tion and consecrated selflessness from which the world 
has, from the beginning, drawn its moral and reli- 
gious strength? 

The truth is that the ideal for which Woman Suf- 
frage stands has come, through suffering, to be a 
religion. No other faith held in the civilised world 
to-day counts so many adherents ready to suffer so 
much for their faith's sake. Why not try to realise 
what this means? For to realise it will shorten a 
bitter time. 

We know that some who are not ignorant of the 
causes behind the recent outbreak nevertheless main- 
tain that for the authorities to treat with those who 
have defied the law would be wholly without prece- 
dent. Such a contention loses sight of the object- 
lesson offered by the former law-breaker, now law- 
maker, and chosen colleague of the Prime Minister; 
loses sight of the attitude of authorities and public 
alike, towards General Botha; loses sight of the col- 
lective evidence of the past. Yet we are told that 
because some glass has been broken, any show of 
understanding, or consideration, towards Militant 
Suffragists would involve a menace to the founda- 
tions of civilisation. 

The women's answer to that is that they are fight- 
ing against the real, not a fancied menace, and fight- 
ing for a less imperfect civilisation. 

But perhaps even those who think their own op- 



290 WAY STATIONS 

position to Militant Suffragism is founded on love 
of law and order, even they may yet ask themselves 
if they may reasonably hope that the little mops of 
the magistrates or the bigger broom of the superior 
court will keep back this tide. Does anyone seri- 
ously think that the hundreds of imprisonments, the 
forcible-feeding torture, the death and insanity al- 
ready to the credit (?) of the policy of repression 
have had their intended effect? And yet towards 
this forty-year-old demand, with half the House of 
Commons on its side and more than half the Cabinet, 
the Government's only change from an attitude of 
cynical neglect is to stronger methods of repression. 

The Prime Minister, whose ignorance of the 
deeper forces at work is still very great, welcomed 
yesterday the newest of these methods proposed by 
a Member of Parliament — a Bill to make the re- 
cent damage done chargeable to the funds of the so- 
ciety to which the agitators belong. Does he really 
think that, if he should be able to make forfeit those 
funds (of which the greater part represent sixpence 
by sixpence faith and self-denial such as has no paral- 
lel elsewhere in the world) — does the Prime Min- 
ister seriously think such a course will put an ex- 
tinguisher on the Suffrage candle? 

Rather it will blow the flame to conflagration. 
And you, sir (I say it with all respect), will not be 
able wholly to free yourself from responsibility in 
the misreading of the situation on the part of offi- 
cials — isolated each in the engrossing business of 



LETTER TO U THE TIMES" 291 

his special department, and yet called on to take 
action in a matter whose significance has been ob- 
scured and whose meaning has been travestied by the 
press. The Prime Minister, in the absence of first- 
hand knowledge, proposes, he says, to consult the 
Attorney-General. Let him rather send out some 
impartial observer to report faithfully the breadth 
and depth of this disaffection. He will perhaps 
carry back some idea of the " mandate " left behind 
by the woman who has gone to prison, the woman 
whom 40,000 others followed through the London 
streets last June in token of their adhesion to the 
governing aim of her life. That assurance she has 
sent from prison of an " inexhaustible supply " was 
no vain boast. 

You were shocked and astonished at the broken 
glass. I assure you that many of us have come to 
read of broken glass with an intensity of relief. 

Some of our opponents told us long ago to what 
the agitation would lead. We scouted the idea — 
out of faith in the wisdom and right feeling of men, 
not from any doubt of how far women would go in 
pursuit of an end beside which penal servitude itself 
is slight and negligible. 

I am, Sir, yours truly, 

Elizabeth Robins. 

March 5. 



292 WAY STATIONS 

TIME TABLE 

March 5th-22nd, 19 12 

On the evening of March 5th the authorities in their 
turn made a raid. The offices of the Women's Social 
and Political Union at Clement's Inn were invaded, 
overhauled, and Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence ar- 
rested on the charge of " conspiring to incite certain per- 
sons to commit malicious damage to property." Of the 
three other persons named in the warrant, Mrs. Pank- 
hurst and Mrs. Tuke were already in prison, on the lesser 
charge in connection with the window-breaking of the 
previous week, and Miss Christabel Pankhurst could not 
anywhere be found. 

The way in which the regular staff and outside friends 
of the Union related themselves to the changed condi- 
tions thus brought about showed that though the last half- 
dozen years' work had not yet won political freedom, it 
had won for the women, who stood closest to the Union, a 
certain freedom of soul. In the midst of the profound 
excitement created by the clean sweep effected by 
the Government, with newsboys crying, " Conspiracy ! " 
in the streets, opponents jubilating over "the death- 
blow " dealt to the forward faction, and predicting 
fresh arrests — up there, high above those voices, in 
the midst of premises ransacked and rifled, visitors to 
Clement's Inn the next morning found the offices open 
as usual, heads of departments at their posts, and an un- 
dismayed activity reigning. From outside, offers of aid 
— personal and financial — were pouring in, and the 
work of the Union was going forward with an earnest- 
ness and efficiency greater even than common. 



LETTER TO "THE TIMES " 293 

And the quiet of it all ! The indifference to the prob- 
able wider casting of that net which had enmeshed the 
bigger fish. Now that the Pethick Lawrences were in 
prison, the leader-writer of the paper and director of 
the policy of the Union was that arch-conspirator on 
Whom the law had failed to lay its hands. No secret 
was ever better kept than her place of concealment. An 
acting-editor of distinguished ability and rare devotion 
was instantly produced in the person of Miss Evelyn 
Sharp. At her suggestion others who did not usually 
write for the paper were called upon to help in the crisis. 
Persons who responded were repeatedly warned of 
their foolhardiness. By associating themselves with a so- 
ciety under the ban of the Government, a society whose 
leaders were about to be tried before the High Court on 
a charge of conspiracy, friends and helpers of the Wom- 
en's Social and Political Union laid themselves open to a 
similar indictment. The probable truth of this was gen- 
erally admitted. No one was heard to deny it. But the 
only change in the aspect of affairs inside the Union was 
an increased devotion to its service, and an even greater 
disregard of possible consequences to the individual. 

Such fear as the Government's action had evoked was 
confined to persons outside the Union. Cabinet Minis- 
ters went doubly guarded, and sentences of hard labour, 
intended to intimidate, were pronounced on women for 
breaking a few shillings' worth of glass. Three hun- 
dred women were now behind prison bars. The British 
Museum, the Royal Academy, and the Royal United 
Service Institution were closed for the publicly assigned 
reason — fear of what the Militants might do. This 
dread extending under the influence of panic to what the 
Militants might say, carried certain Suffragist Members 



294 WAY STATIONS 

of Parliament clean out of their true course. In the 
House of Commons and in the press, public notice was 
given that for fear the Militants would take any vote 
given now in favour of the Suffrage as a sign that Mili- 
tant tactics had succeeded — the vote about to be cast 
would be against the Conciliation Bill. And this, in spite 
of the fact that under the transformed conditions created 
by the Government's " Manhood " proposals, the Concil- 
iation Bill had been opposed and denounced by the Mili- 
tants. 

But politicians have not yet thought enough about 
Woman Suffrage to avoid these glaring inconsistencies. 
Part of the service done by Militancy was to elicit such 
inconsistencies and to make other people, if not their 
authors, recognise them. 



XVII 

THE PERFIDY OF SYMPATHIZERS* 

There are Suffragists who have been at a loss, up 
to the last few days, to detect the smallest service 
done by recent Militancy. 

These persons owe to such " sympathisers " as 
Sir William Byles the knowledge of disguises torn 
away, and pretences shattered by the events of the 
last three weeks. 

Personally, I do not believe that Mrs. Pankhurst, 
in her most militant mood, would have ventured to 
foretell so ironic a proof of the untrustworthiness 
of politicians as has been offered to the world in the 
threats of withdrawal on the part of certain friends 
— " up till now." 

Not the words of Mr. Hobhouse at Bristol, not 
Lord Haldane's contempt for the more patient 
policy of pinpricks, nothing that has yet been said, 
sheds so much light on the meaning of militancy 
as the spectacle of these lesser " Sympathisers " find- 
ing in broken glass an excuse for breaking prom- 
ises. 

We have had, to be sure, Lord Lytton's commen- 
tary: "Members of Parliament are just as hyster- 

* Published in Votes for Women, March 22, 1912. 

295 



296 WAY STATIONS 

ical as women, lose their heads just as readily, and 
are just as apt to fly to extremes upon the smallest 
provocation. 55 

And still, many a Suffragist has read the papers 
with astonished eyes, taking in, only gradually, the 
fact that here was proof upon proof of a truth 
veiled before from all but the more astute. 

The simpler-minded are learning not a little from 
the object-lesson afforded by the spectacle of these 
champions tumbling over one another, in their haste 
to run away from a great principle — which we 
would have thought they would be all the stauncher 
to defend, the more they honestly thought that prin- 
ciple endangered. 

One of the greatest difficulties the Suffrage lead- 
ers have had to deal with has been the problem of 
how to prevent their followers from being lulled into 
a false security ; how to guard the rank and file from 
reposing a too implicit confidence upon politicians 
content to call themselves friends, and " leave it at 
that." 

The difficulty presented by this deadlock is fast 
disappearing. A touchstone has been applied which 
enables the Suffragist, with an irrefragable cer- 
tainty, to detect the pinchbeck in political sympathy 
from the gold. * 

The simplicity which I have admitted has not been 
all on the side of women. 

The " Pall Mall Gazette " of March 6th was so 
good as to tell us who those were who had been 



PERFIDY OF SYMPATHISERS 297 

a driven into the Anti-Suffrage camp by the window- 
smashing." 

They were 6i those who were lukewarm." 

Another paper says : " Hitherto the mass of men 
have listened to the appeal of women for votes with 
kindly toleration 9 ' (the italics mine). The para- 
graph ends : " There are ominous signs, however." 

These signs and omens are precisely such as were 
needed by, as I say, the more confiding type of Suf- 
fragist. Many a woman has come with difficulty, 
and only in these last two weeks, to see that with a 
certain number of men (a small number, we are glad 
to believe) the promise to support Woman Suffrage 
bore no relation to conviction on the subject. 

Not patience alone has suffered by that discovery, 
but the respect which we find no difficulty in feeling 
for straightforward opponents. 

Much has been made of the surface differences be- 
tween the Suffrage camps. Yet we are at one not 
only in the prime article of our faith. We take 
precisely the same view of the perfidy of " friends " 
both in and out of the House of Commons. 

Members of the W.S.P.U. are the first to say that, 
if punishment of all Suffragists, for the militant acts 
of a section, represents men's idea of fairness — it 
certainly does not represent women's. 

The carrying out of these poor threats will be 
taken by the W.S.P.U., and ultimately by the public, 
as further justification of that cumulative distrust of 
the so-called friends of the Suffrage, and that cumu- 



298 WAY STATIONS 

lative abhorrence of bad faith which lately found pub- 
lic expression. 

Many women feel an unconquerable, vicarious 
shame on looking into the record of certain of our 
" friends." 

Leaving out of count the more flagrant cases of 
bad faith, we find that Members of Parliament seem 
to think themselves active in our behalf, even gener- 
ous, almost daring, when they have repeated the 
forty-year-old conviction: Women should be repre- 
sented as well as taxed. 

But when the mere iteration of that conviction has 
come to sound damnable in ears strained to catch the 
logical conclusion — when women have shown they 
are not as content, as men seem, with talking and 
writing about reform — when, casting about for some 
means to force a skulking " sympathy " into the open, 
women succeed at last in driving such sympathisers 
first out of hiding, and ultimately out of the field, 
they find they have done the next best thing to mak-. 
ing an honest friend. 

What remains to be found out is not someone's 
opinion of militant methods as a means of drawing 
public attention to an urgent matter too long neg- 
lected — though few will say that end has not been 
achieved. What tens of thousands of women want 
to know is: How much verifiable foundation was 
there for the belief in the bad faith of certain 
" supporters "? 



PERFIDY OF SYMPATHISERS 299 

The world has already seen with what amazing 
celerity certain gentlemen have sprung forward to 
answer that question with public justification of the 
worst suspicions of the Militants. 

The Suffragist Member of Parliament who finds 
an excuse for his supineness in women's impatience 
with that very defect in him, the man who cries out: 
" Look at me, while I wriggle out of my pledge 
through a hole in the window ! " — owes the public an 
explanation of why he ever gave himself the trouble 
to endorse a principle which, by his own confession, 
means for him so little. 

Did he endorse Woman Suffrage because he 
thought he might count on ample time to fondle the 
theme in public, and to attitudinise on platforms as 
the champion of woman? Or was he a Suffragist 
because he felt sure that never would any woman be 
a Suffragist in stark earnest — as passionate for 
freedom as a man? 

However he may answer these questions, he may 
rest assured that the " sympathiser " who at this 
crisis withdraws his support will be recognised for 
what he is. 

One of the hopeful things about the coming of 
women into public affairs is that women are not 
hypnotised by party shibboleths, nor blinded to plain 
issues because those issues are given misleading 
names. 

Nothing so surprises women, nothing so shames 



300 WAY STATIONS 

humanity in their eyes, as the shifts and insincerities 
certain public men permit themselves. 

In the face of men's shoulder-shrugging at our 
ignorance of politics and law, few women will be 
found /to envy the erudition and experience which 
enable that eminent publicist, Prof. Dicey, for in- 
stance, to acknowledge without shame his hope that 
those of his sex who have endorsed the principle of 
Woman Suffrage have endorsed that principle with- 
out being convinced of its justice or concerned to 
see justice done. 

Without contradiction, Prof. Dicey was repre- 
sented by the press last autumn as saying: "It is 
idle to count up the number of M.P.'s nominally 
pledged to the principle of Woman Suffrage. I 
refused to be imposed upon by the political fiction 
that all these pledged M.P.'s have made up their 
own minds to sanction the most novel, and one of the 
most hazardous, of social and political experiments." 

Truly, Militancy beside that seems not only respect- 
able, but austerely moral. 

Certain critics of the W.S.P.U., knowing that the 
trifling and insincerity of politicians was the root 
cause of the Militant outbreak, now represent the 
Union as rejoicing over the latest illustration of the 
ground for distrust. If that supposed view of 
the Militants is to be justified to the full, let more, 
and yet more, of our " friends " in Parliament show 
to the world the base metal of their support. 



PERFIDY OF SYMPATHISERS 301 

TIME TABLE 

March 22nd-28th, 191 2 

A condition of grave industrial unrest had for weeks 
been a cause of profound uneasiness to employers of la- 
bour^ to the Government, and to the general public. Not 
only in English collieries, but in Scotland, and notably 
in Wales, the discontent of the miners had culminated in 
a practically universal strike. Mills and furnaces were 
shut down, blacklegs who attempted to open them were 
mobbed and mauled, industry was paralysed. Great em- 
ployers of labour, and their representatives in the press, 
were urging the Prime Minister to employ the troops in 
coercion. Instead of doing that, Mr. Asquith, disregard- 
ing the passionate adjuration of the capitalist class, la- 
boured without ceasing to frame some compromise which 
would meet the demands of a great body of workmen 
armed with voting powers. Vested interest redoubled its 
denunciation of the Prime Minister, and pointed iron- 
ically to the reasons for his action. These were rated 
at sixty-seven, that being the number of seats controlled 
by miners' votes. Meanwhile, from platform and press 
came demands for the arrest of the demagogues who 
were inciting the strikers to violence. But male inciters 
were left at large. 

The voice of privilege was also raised to advocate con- 
fiscation of those Trade Union funds which kept the 
strike alive. "The Times" said: 

" The whole subject assumes a new aspect when or- 
ganisations and funds are used to stop or paralyse the 
entire trade of the country; when crowds are made desti- 



302 WAY STATIONS 

tute, and when, as must happen, mortality and disease 
must increase." 

Then from Durham a different note. A Justice of the 
Peace wrote to the press: 

"... We read that a number of women have been 
arrested on warrants charged with ' conspiracy to commit 
wilful damage to property/ In the same issue, under 
the heading of ' Strikers' Terrorism/ you state that hun- 
dreds of miners at Tarbran Colliery, in Midlothian, 
armed with sticks, waited at the pit-head for the men 
working underground, and threatened if they did not 
cease work they would be thrown into Cobbinshaw Loch, 
and they were forced to return home. 

" Now this is a gross offence against the liberty of the 
subject, and a far more serious crime than any attack 
on private property and smashing of windows, yet I do 
not see any trace of the Treasury having issued war- 
rants against these ruffians. I presume the reason is 
that the miners have votes and the women have not, and 
that the law is to be enforced against the non-voter while 
the voter can defy it with impunity." 

This distinction, long clear to Suffragists, was further 
emphasised by " The Times' " suggestion of penal servi- 
tude for the Suffragist leaders whose case was still sub 
judice. The editorial added: "It remains also to be 
seen whether the law cannot reach those who, behind the 
scenes, plan and provide funds for these demonstra- 
tions." 

There was no secret about the contributors to the 
Women's Social and Political Union. The published list 
would have furnished a very pretty basis of indictment 
had the numbers and the character of the contributors 
not damped the ardour of official reprisal. Mr. Bodkin 



PERFIDY OF SYMPATHISERS 303 

had much to say at Bow Street in stating the case for 
the prosecution about " aiding and abetting " — which ap- 
parently could be done to a degree legally indictable 
by the appearance of sympathisers at W.S.P.U. meet- 
ings [!], and by their mere sitting there without protest 
whilst others preached rebellion. Since this expert opin- 
ion was listened to without protest by the other men of 
the law present, Mr. Bodkin's view of the law must be 
supposed to have done no violence to the law. 

Members of the Union looked daily for further arrests 
in pursuance of the policy of intimidation. But the 
authorities had their hands full. No new arrests were 
made. A rumour was diligently spread that, for clem- 
ency's sake, bygones would be bygones. But from this 
time forward, whoever ventured to speak in favour of, 
or subscribe a penny to, the Women's Social and Polit- 
ical Union, would be dealt with according to the law of 
conspiracy. 

There was no assurance whatever that this was not 
true. A good many women who, had not themselves 
broken windows or tried to force a way into the com- 
mons, must have found in this threat a call to bear 
witness to their conviction that the impatience of Suffra- 
gists was justified. 

On the evening of March 28th, when the Conciliation 
Bill was once more under debate in the House of Com- 
mons, a meeting was held at the Albert Hall by the 
Women's Social and Political Union. In the space of 
a few minutes ^£10,000 was subscribed to the Fighting 
Fund. 



XVIII 
AT THE ALBERT HALL* 

Miss Kenney, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

I rise for the purpose of seconding the resolution. 

No one, of however little authority, can speak in 
public at a time like this without a sense of responsi- 
bility. 

That sense has taken some of us in these last days 
to the police-courts. We watched, as the evidence 
piled up, facts emerge which the prosecution had 
not intended to bring out. We saw evidence of the 
new solidarity among women; glimpses of that re- 
solve which has so perplexed the easy-liver, the re- 
solve not to acquiesce any longer in certain evils 
which the mass of men leave untouched; some evils 
the mass of men do not want mentioned; evils which 
many men would like the happier women not even to 
know. Well, those evils are beginning, only begin- 
ning, to be understood; and that is the reason the 
prisons are filling. 

I spoke of responsibility. Those of us who have 
spent days in court and in visiting His Majesty's 
prisons, are not likely to feel our sense of responsi- 
bility lessened. 

But I think we are in better cheer about Woman 

* .Speech delivered March 28, 1912. 

804 



AT THE ALBERT HALL 305 

Suffrage than any others, perhaps, who have that 
Cause at heart. 

I wish everyone here, instead of listening to me, 
might have shared in my illumination. I wish you 
had seen Mrs. Pankhurst! Try to imagine her, 
waiting over two weeks for facilities to prepare her 
defence — facilities freely given to the swindler and 
the fomenter of a devastating war. Imagine the 
magistrate telling Mrs. Pankhurst last week that she 
had nothing to complain of, as she now had those fa- 
cilities ; although the fact was, that by a series of, let 
us say, misunderstandings between the Home Office 
and the prison authorities, the prisoner was still with- 
out facilities. Let us have this quite clear. We 
are not urging anything we cannot substantiate. 
Either the Home Office was misinformed, or the 
prison authorities misinterpreted the order. The 
point is that Mrs. Pankhurst was still without those 
facilities. When, on two separate days, she rose in 
court and told the magistrate the facts, what was 
his answer ? " Next case! " 

I wish you had seen Mrs. Lawrence! Best of all 
is to see her here. 1 But whether in prison or in the 
dock, she was an object-lesson in calmness for ex- 
cited editors and hysterical doctors. 2 

iMr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, to the great surprise of 
the public and even of their closest friends, had been released 
on bail that afternoon, and though prohibited from taking 
any part in the meeting, they sat upon the platform. 

2 That morning had appeared Sir Almroth Wright's ill- 
famed letter to " The Times." 



306 WAY STATIONS 

I wish as much as anything that you could have 
come to see the man we are all proud to call our 
friend — the man who for the sake of this Cause 
has been in Brixton Prison. Members of the Union 
do not need to be told that sex-antagonism is not 
active among us, whatever may be the case else- 
where. Of few things are we so proud as the sort 
of friendship men have shown this Union. What 
other Suffrage Society has had its aims so kept be- 
fore the House of Commons? What other body of 
women can boast men-friends who are ready to give 
up personal ambition, to sacrifice money, peace of 
mind, to risk life and limb? This Union has such 
friends. But if not for the wider gratitude we owe 
to men, no member of the Union but will be able to 
renew her faith in brotherhood by thinking of Mr. 
Lawrence. 

These last days, then, have emphasised the fact 
that the authorities are trying to crush a spirit that 
is indomitable. We are told that the Militants 
" miscalculated " the anger and resentment they had 
aroused. No, not " miscalculated " — for their cal- 
culating was occupied with another problem. They 
are indifferent to anger and resentment. When a 
section of the public comes to that frame of mind, 
the situation is serious. Those who love law and 
order owe more than they are aware to the Militant 
leaders. You know the acts the leaders have sanc- 
tioned. You do not know the deeds they have 
prevented. 



AT THE ALBERT HALL 307 

The authorities have withdrawn the leaders. A 
body of people, inflamed by a sense of injustice, is 
left without those captains to whose direction the 
rank and file are accustomed to look. 

Well, that, too, is a responsibility. For the es- 
sence of this agitation is that patience in the eyes of 
certain women has not only ceased to be a virtue — 
it has ceased to be decent. You may choose to be pa- 
tient in bearing your own misery; but is patience in 
bearing other people's misery so fine a thing that 
you must maltreat those who refuse? 

And when you have maltreated them, what then? 
The agitation will go on. The Suffrage forces, as 
we have seen, can be led from dock and prison. 
They can be inspired by a leader not only out of 
our sight. A leader with the power of making herself 
invisible to all her enemies. Yet she is very present to 
all her friends, — that spirit of air and fire called 
Christabel. The warrant to arrest her has given 
her seven-league boots — - has given her wings. She 
has obviously been in Persia. At least so I gather 
from the late Financial Agent to that Government. 
He has been telling an audience in America of the 
extraordinary service to the cause of liberty recently 
given by Persian women. They have been not only 
the sustaining — they have been the active, the 
" militant " force. That word militant gave the 
secret away. We were not surprised after that to 
hear the Financial Agent say he had never seen those 



SOS WAY STATIONS 

ladies 9 faces. They always wore their veils. One 
was probably a motor-veil. 3 

The wandering spirit of Militancy is bolder when 
she reaches China. You heard what she was doing 
there last week. " The Times " has told us how 
the Chinese Suffragettes had all of a sudden grown 
dissatisfied with the lukewarm approval of Votes for 
Women recently ratified by the National Assembly 
at Nanking. If we failed to recognise the accent 
of that dissatisfaction, we should have recognised the 
hand in what followed. The Chinese Suffragettes, 
says " The Times," broke the windows, mauled the 
guards, and finally terrorised the Assembly, although 
soldiers had been called in for protection. The ac- 
count ends by saying that the debate on Woman's 
Suffrage had to be reopened. Is not the inference 
clear ? 

There is no country in Europe unvisited by this 
wandering spirit. To its effect upon America I can 
testify. There, without any slavish copying of 
method, the Americans have taken fire from the Eng- 
lish torch. The flames have spread from Canada 
to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific. No fair-minded person can deny that the 
women of those two great states, the State of Wash- 
ington and the State of California, owe their politi- 
cal freedom to the New Spirit — the spirit typified 

3 In the many rumours of Miss Pankhurst having been seen 
here, there, and yonder, she was usually described as wearing 
a motor-veil. 



AT THE ALBERT HALL 309 

for us in the name of Christabel. And this spirit that 
ranges the hemispheres is going to be shut up in 
Holloway Prison! 

While we are gathered here, certain persons in 
" another place " are also making speeches. One 
difference between them and us is that with the 
power to do so much more, " friends " in that other 
place have rested content with making speeches 
about Woman Suffrage for over forty years ! Oh, 
how much more those gentlemen must like making 
speeches than women do! And we know those 
speeches. All the way from Westminster to Ken- 
sington we can hear them. The academic arguments 
in favour; the more passionate objections against. 
What are they in essence, those objections? 

Called by a dozen names, they may be summed 
up in one. Fear! 

Fear has had much to do with retarding justice. 
The Tories are " afraid " the majority of women 
may turn Radical. 

The Liberals are " afraid " of the well-known Con- 
servative element in women. 

Your Indian administrators are " afraid " of what 
the subject races will think of the superior race. 

Your very soldier is not ashamed to own himself 
u afraid " — afraid of women's love of peace, while 
the peace-lover is " afraid " of her susceptibility to 
military glory. 

Afraid ! Afraid ! As I have said, fear was our 
pitfall, too. And that is why we do well to em- 



310 WAY STATIONS 

phasise the greatest victory gained so far in this 
fight. What is our greatest victory? Our greatest 
victory is the victory over fear. We have learned, at 
last, where to look for our worst enemies. Not in 
the House of Commons. Not in the House of Lords. 
Not in the Anti-Suffrage League. Not even in the 
inert mass of the unawakened. Our worst enemies 
are those which walk in that dark legion recruited 
out of our own fears. These enemies have a hun- 
dred disguises to deceive us. When we have beaten 
them off the ground of our individual danger, 
they re-appear under the cloak of our genuine fear 
for others. We have to remember that in the long 
climb up from barbarism, Courage was always lead- 
ing us on — Cowardice was always dragging us 
back. There is nothing so paralysing in its ef- 
fect, nothing so de-humanising as fear. It is the 
father of cruelty. In the early days of all the races 
of the earth — before the altar where the human 
sacrifice lay bleeding, crouched that figure of Fear. 
When patriot men had driven it out of their hearts, 
when the better thinkers found that the dominant 
world-force was not malevolent, but benevolent — 
still the great mass of women, being shut out from 
that wider knowledge which is experience, not al- 
lowed to face the common enemies of society in the 
open — women became, as those who hide and evade 
must always become, the special prey of fear. 

Well, a great breach has been newly made in fear's 



AT THE ALBERT HALL 311 

last stronghold. We may fairly doubt if ever be- 
fore, in so short a time, so many fears have been 
slain. To have routed that dark host, to have 
found (as hundreds and hundreds of women have) 
that they cannot any more be made afraid — that is 
the outstanding victory, I do not mean that they 
no longer shrink from some specific act. I mean 
far more. I mean that, however they decide to con- 
duct their campaign, they are delivered from the 
old tyranny of dreading pains and penalties. 

I should like to say that I feel there is a very 
steadying quality in this fearlessness. It has noth- 
ing in common with that miscalled courage which 
breaks out in any cruel fashion. It is too full of 
confidence for that — and of confidence too well- 
placed. Nothing but doubt of our sure triumph, 
only despair could deaden the minds of women to 
the sanctity of human life. For any of us, who 
think we understand the value of life, to seem to 
join with those who hold life cheap would be to 
desert our colours. We should be resurrecting that 
fear which we had buried. 

One last instance of the tyranny of fear, and I 
have done. A Cabinet Minister who seemed to be 
" almost persuaded " asked in private some time ago 
why England should be the first Great Power to try 
this great experiment. One could only say that it 
seemed natural that the Mother of Parliaments should 
lead the way. But I had better authority than I 



312 WAY STATIONS 

knew. I might have answered in the terms of that 
proud boast of Milton's — - and I do not believe the 
passion of patriotism has ever found finer expres- 
sion — " It would not " (Milton said) — " it would 
not be the first nor the second time since our Ancient 
Druides . . . that England hath had this honour 
vouchsafed from Heaven: to give out Reformation 
to the world" 

TIME TABLE 

March 28th — April, 1912 

The debate on the revised Conciliation Bill had been 
postponed in order that the Government might continue 
its earnest, its passionate attempt at a sympathetic set- 
tlement of the miners' claims. On the day when the un- 
satisfactory issue of the arbitration conference was made 
public a changed Prime Minister appeared in the House. 
Under obvious physical strain and stress of emotion, Mr. 
Asquith announced the failure of his efforts to compose 
the bitter quarrel between employers and employed. 
The newspapers said the Prime Minister made acknowl- 
edgment of this failure with tears in his eyes. He was 
talking about a situation he had studied closely, a prob- 
lem to which he had given the best of his insight and 
evidence-weighing faculty — qualities so conspicuous in 
him when summoned to the service of men's affairs. 

The day which had long been allocated to the Wom- 
en's Bill was devoted to pressing through the House a 
measure to enforce by Act of Parliament that " mini- 
mum wage " to which the owners of mines and collieries 
had contemptuously refused assent. 



AT THE ALBERT HALL 313 

In view of the public exigency, women made no pro- 
test at being put off yet again. But they remembered 
that this was the seventh occasion upon which one Gov- 
ernment and another, driven by no such exigency, had 
taken for other business the day appointed for considera- 
tion of a Woman Suffrage Bill. 

No charge is so often made against Suffragists as that 
of impatience. Yet they were expected to look on, and 
did look on, while the impatience of men with votes put 
the country to a cost greater in one day than the sum 
total in all the years of women's agitation. We remem- 
bered that the principle of the minimum wage was a 
newer, stranger portent on the horizon of the public 
mind in England, than was the principle of Woman 
Suffrage. Since 1870 thirty Bills advocating the Suf- 
frage had been discussed in Parliament, and on seven 
occasions had passed a second reading. But women were 
" impatient/' 

Under the goad of men holding in reserve a vote which 
could decide the fortunes of the Liberal party at the 
next election, the Government found itself impelled to 
rush through a piece of legislation so new, radical, and 
hotly opposed as the Minimum Wage — a measure which 
no one in power would have introduced at that time for 
justice' sake, a measure which many men of both parties 
predicted would deal a death-blow to British trade, and 
bring about the downfall of the Empire. 

In the teeth of opposition the Government forced this 
measure through the Commons in a few days. 

On March 28th the Conciliation (Suffrage) Bill was 
defeated by Irish Nationalists in co-operation with cer- 
tain Liberals who had called themselves Suffragists. 

The Irish point of view was clear enough. After the 



314 WAY STATIONS 

last election but one, the party in power in the British 
Parliament had been returned so shorn of strength that 
the Liberal vote alone was insufficient to keep Liberals 
in office. Here was the opportunity for which the Irish 
Nationalists had long been waiting. Long they had 
stood on the Liberal doorstep, hat in hand. The day 
was come at last when Liberals must wait on the Irish. 
Their leader, Mr. John Redmond, was not slow to avail 
himself of the situation. He was openly greeted (if I 
remember, in the House of Commons itself) as " Dic- 
tator " — not alone of Irish Nationalist politics, but of 
every move in British " Liberal " legislation. 

The subsequent history of the fortunes of Woman Suf- 
frage in the House was closely involved with the need 
of the Irish to keep the present Government in power (at 
least till Home Rule was law), and the sore need on 
Mr. Asquith's part of Irish support to keep the weakened 
Liberal majority from extinction. This interdependence 
had remained after the last election, which saw but a 
single seat added to the Liberal forces. 

Before the significance of Irish influence had been 
realised by the other Suffrage Societies, an astute emis- 
sary of the Women's Social and Political Union returned 
from Ireland with private information to the effect that 
Nationalists were regarding the Suffrage question with 
acute anxiety. 

Apart from the fact that, in the case of the Nation- 
alists, long-nursing of a major political passion had 
weakened their interest in other reforms, the notorious 
disagreement in the British Cabinet between Pro- and 
Anti-Suffragists intensified Irish dread of the disinte- 
grating influence exercised upon artificial solidarity by 
this foundation-shaking question. Had the Conciliation 



AT THE ALBERT HALL 315 

Bill, or any other Woman Suffrage measure, been intro- 
duced by the Government, or been known to enjoy the 
favour of the Prime Minister, none so quick as the Irish 
to support it through thick and thin. As matters stood, 
Irish concern for a Prime Minister pledged to Home 
Rule stood tacitly committed to rescue Mr. Asquith from 
his embarrassment, and to sweep the probable stumbling- 
block out of the Nationalist path. There is reason to 
believe that Irish policy in this affair had been cut and 
dried months before the Conciliation Bill came before 
the House. Eight months later Lord Robert Cecil asked 
in Parliament: " How came it about, if the National- 
ists had always been free to vote as they pleased on the 
Women's Franchise question, that some of their number 
voted against the Conciliation Bill, and that none of 
them voted for it? " 

A straight answer to that question might show the 
Nationalist view of equity limited, and the Nationalist 
sense even of mere expediency at fault. But no probing 
as to the ground of his action towards Suffrage " Con- 
ciliation " could be as embarrassing to the Irishman as 
it would seem to be to his fellow-wreckers — the Liberal 
" Suffragist " Members of Parliament who voted 
against the Bill. Since they had no such excuse as the 
Irish, since wearing the Suffragist label they could not 
admit their distrust and fear of Votes for Women, they 
must, one would suppose, have some well-considered rea- 
son to give for their share in wrecking the Conciliation 
Bill. 

They had a reason, and they gave it: the violent deeds 
of the Militants. 

The tolerance of these gentlemen had moulted no 
feather before the spectacle of greater violence. The 



316 WAY STATIONS 

difference between the violent deeds of Militants and the 
violent deeds of miners is not denied. One difference 
is: the aim of the Militants was political freedom, the 
aim of the miners was better wages. Another difference 
lay in the fact that the Militants, to win attention to their 
claims, threw stones at windows, whereas the miners, to 
the same end, threw stones at human beings and did 
grave bodily injury. Another difference: the Militants 
were lodged in prison for their lesser violence under sen- 
tence of hard labour. The miners were not even ar- 
rested. " Why not ? " asked a member in the House. 
The Home Secretary, not denying that the strikers had 
stoned the police, .answered: "I hope the honourable 
gentleman will not mind my saying that I deprecate very 
much questions which might arouse feelings of anger." 

And then people wondered that the friends of those 
imprisoned women felt an anger before which the so- 
called " violent deeds " of their sisters took on a differ- 
ent face. 

The defeat of the Conciliation Bill of 1910 had been 
sincerely mourned. The defeat of the Conciliation Bill 
of 1912 was a foregone conclusion. 



XIX 

SERMONS IN STONES* 

The great majority of Suffragists of all societies 
are lovers of peace. They believe in peace not as 
merely a humane sentiment, but as the only sound 
political economy. 

Those who are not taken in by the fallacy that 
physical force is the basis of civilised government, 
are more anxious than the most scandalised official 
that the evil example of men in revolt should be 
avoided by women. That is not to say that the most 
fanatical peace-lover is necessarily blind to the 
fact, — which only sentimentality can ignore — that 
women are quite as human as men. Women are liable 
to be pleased and won by fair promises ; women are 
liable to be angered and antagonised by betrayal. 

Why not? Hath not a woman eyes? Hath not 
a woman hands, organs, dimensions, sinews, affec- 
tions, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with 
the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, 
treated by the same means, warmed and cooled 
by the same winter and summer as her brother 
is? 

The answer should bring us close to thankfulness 
that, in spite of provocation, women, so far, have 

* Reprinted by permission of the Contemporary Review. 

317 



318 WAY STATIONS 

not, in their struggle for freedom, emulated the more 
violent deeds of men. Nevertheless, the Militant 
Suffragists have succeeded, in the words of " The 
Times, 59 in bringing about " the marked and pro- 
found change which has taken place in public opinion, 
which formerly treated the agitation with tolerant 
amusement" 

Since that is not only a great achievement, since 
to do away with tolerant amusement is precisely what 
the forward party set out to effect, no one can be 
surprised that the tactics of that party should have 
roused a passion of opposition never accorded to 
the milder propaganda. The so-called militant 
tactics are those which have most seriously embar- 
rassed the opponents of Woman Suffrage. They 
are the tactics which have rallied the greater num- 
bers, and the larger financial backing, to the Cause. 
They are tactics which have breathed new life into 
the very societies which denounce Militancy. 

To defend the anti-Government by-election policy, 
or the interruption of Cabinet Ministers' meetings 
by persons unable otherwise to record their strong 
convictions on matters of public importance, would 
Jbe too easy a task. Let us, therefore, consider those 
actions yet more bitterly denounced, actions held in 
many quarters to be not only unpardonable, but in- 
explicable, as coming from reputable educated 
women. Looking first at one of the immediate ef- 
fects of the militant acts, is not the most casual 
critic given pause, by reflecting that the great body 



SERMONS IN STONES 319 

of respectable women who compose the Social and 
Political Union have not repudiated these tactics? 

Anyone who wishes to know the sort of women 
who support the Union has only to look down the 
columns setting forth the subscribers to the funds. 
Such examination will show that the sinews for this 
moral war were provided by working wives and 
mothers, by doctors and nurses, by painters, musi- 
cians, teachers, domestic servants, " great ladies," 
and a number of the first men in England. The few 
hundred who are punished and held up to obloquy 
for doing the militant acts are sustained by the 
ever-growing army which stands behind, supporting 
and, if not rejoicing in these deeds, sympathising 
with the state of mind of which they are the outcome. 
That would be a superficial power of analysis which 
should set down this support to delight in lawless- 
ness. In all communities women form the law-abid- 
ing section. Exceeding men as they do in most pop- 
ulations, in all prisons, in every reformatory, women 
are in the minority. 

If respectable wives and mothers, girls from thi^ 
Universities and girls from the mill, stand firm be- 
hind the individuals who do the inconvenient and 
(for themselves) dangerous acts, it is because they 
understand — as their critics do not yet understand 
— that although the sum of good-will now in the 
world is probably greater than it ever was before, 
good-will is ineffectual until it is applied. The need 
for its " operant power " must be made manifest 



320 WAY STATIONS 

before it will move. Not active opposition — apathy 
is the arch-enemy of reform. 

At a heavy price (and one does not mean the sum 
of the plate-glass bill) apathy seems to have been 
broken. 

But by stone-throwing! You shrink from that. 
Especially you shrink from the thought that the act 
was committed by women of repute. You may not 
quite comfortably despise it, whatever your creed or 
temper. And for this reason: no one can deny the 
close relationship between a deed and the motive for 
that deed. The motive here (however mistaken you 
may judge it) was no ignoble motive. You cannot 
dissociate character from its expression. And the 
" character " of these women is held in respect wher- 
ever they are best known. 

I do not wish to deny that, from the first, the 
stones have been stones of stumbling to many a good 
Suffragist. Some soothed their dismay by saying, 
what is perfectly true, that this movement has grown 
too big to include only women of philosophic temper. 
By its universality of appeal to women who know life 
it has attracted to it, the apologists said, certain 
reckless spirits, impossible to keep within bounds. 
And after all (thought some of the women who were 
most disturbed by the stone-throwing) we know that 
the need for the reform is so much greater than any- 
one of us has been able to say, that if it is not to 
come by quiet means, come it must, even if it comes 
with tumult. Is it not as well, such women ended 



SERMONS IN STONES 321 

by asking themselves, that the mass of men (who 
are still so ignorant of the movement) should be 
given this sign? Many better things have failed. 
Perhaps the cruder means will be better understood. 

There was this in the way of the first stone-throw- 
ing being understood. It was the work of only a 
few isolated cases, people said, of that well-known 
feminine malady " hysteria. 5 ' The first stone-throw- 
ing had no more significance for most men than any 
other unrelated instance of disagreeable eccentricity. 
But when the continued inaction of Suffragist Mem- 
bers of Parliament multiplied these instances of ec- 
centricity by hundreds, there were found at last to 
be enough of these " departures from the norm " to 
form a class. Enough to mean something. What 
it meant was held by certain women, as well as by 
certain men, to be very terrible. 

No more here than elsewhere does any act stand 
unrelated. Let us glance for a moment, then, at 
a sequence of events which I have scant space to re- 
capitulate, but of which too many are ignorant. I 
mean the Woman's Movement of the forty years 
prior to 1906. After the Liberal leaders' betrayal 
of the women in 1884 (when it was chivalrously de- 
cided that " the women must be thrown overboard 
to lighten the ship), the Suffragists of those days 
fought patiently, quietly, a losing battle. They 
kept it up for ten years longer, losing ground little 
by little, till, in 1891, men who were opposed to such 
share as women had won in local government, seeing 



322 WAY STATIONS 

the Suffrage Cause had so declined, felt it was safe 
for its enemies openly to show their hands. And it 
was safe. When the new County Councils were 
formed women were shut out of them. Women were 
turned off the Education Boards. If, in consequence 
of all this, women made any protest against such in- 
justice, their protest was not of such a nature as to be 
heeded, or even to be generally heard. The fact was 
that most of those women who had worked longest and 
most faithfully had now lost heart. The movement 
languished, and by the general public was forgotten. 
In the autumn of 1906, at Ladybank, the present 
Prime Minister, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
when asked what were his views upon the Suffrage, 
could say publicly that it was a question in which he 
had formerly taken some interest, but he had not 
thought about it for fourteen years. Strange as 
such an utterance would sound now from any Mem- 
ber of the Government, no one felt in 1906 that it 
probably in the least overstated a responsible Min- 
ister's undisturbed indifference to the greatest and 
most fundamental reform in the history of civilised 
states. This was the condition of affairs that con- 
fronted the younger generation of Suffragists six 
years ago. They saw how the spirit of the older 
women had been broken, and they knew in pursuit of 
what policy this result had come about. They saw 
that the Cause was not only not going forward, it 
was going back. The older Suffragists had long 
been at the end of their resources. For they had 



SERMONS IN STONES 323 

tried in vain every " constitutional " means. And 
there seemed no other. 

But there was. 

To understand how women justified to themselves 
the adoption of these other means, we must recognise 
that those who knew most about the condition of 
working-class women and children, not only believed 
in Woman Suffrage as a general proposition — they 
were convinced of the urgency of the reform. 

To recognise (if only for argument's sake) this 
urgency, places those who care to understand the 
movement at the women's point of view. Now, if 
you believe that you are fighting, not only for the 
oppressed, but for the final triumph of civilisation, 
you are ready (for the achievement of ends so mo- 
mentous) to make some sacrifice. There are women 
who would even sacrifice a few panes of glass, if the 
crash of that breaking would break the spell which 
has bound men under the Upas tree of an evil 
tradition. 

Remember, that in attempting to break this spell 
women were confronted by an even more difficult 
task than, for long, they realised. Among other 
discoveries by the way, women found to their as- 
tonishment that men, whether by nature or training, 
are the less reasonable sex, the more superstitious, 
the more helpless before custom. Every generation 
of schoolboys exemplifies this afresh. Whether it is 
woman's commerce with the child that has kept the 
great mass of women close to reality and common 



SU WAY STATIONS 

sense, I do not pretend to know. But there would 
seem to be ground for thinking that being called on 
to answer the child's eternal " Why ? " woman's re- 
current need to give a plain and rational account of 
conduct to minds as yet untampered with, as yet un- 
muddled — this necessity may have kept her own 
mind clear of much of the rubbish that has been mis- 
named knowledge, may have kept her sense of pro- 
portion true to the great primitive facts of life and 
love, of suffering and death. 

The man, relieved of the necessity constantly to 
re-envisage life in its simpler, more fundamental as- 
pects, has always tended to make idols of word-spin- 
ners. He hypnotises himself with what he calls 
Philosophy of Life and Science of Government, and 
is the bondslave of outworn forms. Even in the new 
republics he makes a fetish of that which should be 
the simplest, plainest vehicle of justice, namely, the 
common law. Clogged as it is by all manner of 
antiquated mummery, man accepts without misgiv- 
ing, and without humour, this abracadabra of an- 
cient forms and ceremonies. He educates a special 
hierarchy to administer the rites. He will talk to 
you in the twentieth century of indentures and of 
seals, though no indenture is now made, and in lieu 
of wax is a pinked round of scarlet paper. If such 
matters are trifles, the same cannot be said of other 
survivals. In trying those grossly misunderstood 
cases of infant murder, the judge retains the hideous 
mummery of the black cap and the solemn death- 



SERMONS IN STONES 825 

sentence, though he does not any longer expect to 
have the unhappy woman killed. But the effect upon 
the victim of social injustice and puerperal mania 
may be imagined by women, if not by men. 

Again and again we have seen how in Parliament 
an authentic account of gross injustice has left the 
legislators' calm unruffled. But if, in her desire to 
get redress for some intolerable evil, a woman, as 
actually happened about three years ago, comes un- 
» bidden on the floor of the House of Commons, legis- 
lators are stirred to their depths by the breach of 
decorum. The woman is harried out of the place as 
though she were some unclean, wild animal. One 
gentleman, reporting the disgraceful scene for the 
press, said : " Before anyone had presence enough 
of mind to stop her, the woman had almost reached " 
— the reader may well hold his breath and wonder, 
" reached " Whom, or what Holy of Holies ? — " she 
had almost reached the sacred mace" Yet the 
woman had come in the name of that which the mace 
typified. She brought the spirit, and on that oc- 
casion bore sole witness to the sanctity of the symbol 
which, lacking that, is so much silver-gilt. 

But one woman's crossing the floor of the House, 
horrible as was the spectacle, might have been due 
to mental aberration. What seems to have un- 
nerved the authorities is the idea that not merely 
one hysterical woman, but hundreds, should not 
only offer to the Government that disrespect which 
it had earned, but should offer violence to property. 



026 WAY STATIONS 

Men who know the horrors of real war, and in cold 
blood prepare for it, are unspeakably revolted at 
the idea of women using what men call " force " 

— of no matter how innocuous a character, or in 
any cause, however worthy. 

Now, these things are very significant. They 
give women fresh food for thought. Obviously, a 
great many men are not at the beginning of an un- 
derstanding of whereabouts women are in this mat- 
ter. Yet we see that historians and statesmen, look- 
ing at the great issue of political liberty steadily * 
see it whole when it applies to their own sex. Mr. 
Gladstone's words in this connection have been often 
quoted. (See page 31.) 

" I am not," said Burke, " of the opinion of those 
gentlemen who are against disturbing the public re- 
pose. I like a clamour whenever there is an abuse. 
The fire-bell at midnight disturbs your sleep, but it 
keeps you from being burnt in your bed. The hue 
and cry alarms the country, but preserves all the 
property of the province." 

When dealing with women's application of these 
truths, the judicial sex shows lack of a sense of pro- 
portion. The press, last November, dwelt in a par- 
oxysm of horror upon the fact that, among the women 
fighting for their freedom, one sent a stone through 
the window of th^ Westminster Palace Hotel, where 

— oh, enormity beyond belief — a Bishop was dining ! 
The Bishop was quite unhurt. 

But, a Bishop — ! And at dinner, too. 



SERMONS IN STONES 327 

As a Minister of the Crown has reminded us, when 
men wanted votes they did not interrupt a Bishop's 
dinner. They burnt down his palace. 

Those in authority who, instead of concentrating 
their energies upon furtherance of a World-Peace, 
devote their high training, their experience, their in- 
fluence to the formation of new army schemes and 
vaster naval programmes ; these people, actively en- 
gaged in preparation for war, are amongst those 
most outraged and aghast if a woman breaks a win- 
dow. Nevertheless, the woman's act was of the same 
nature as the breaking of the glass case which must 
be done before you can ring the fire-alarm. It is the 
preliminary to warning people of a danger that 
threatens the community. Precisely so the stone. 
Not to injure anyone, but by way of sounding an 
alarm. A thing done to draw attention. How well 
the women aimed is proved by the result. The stone 
succeeds where all the other means have failed. 
Reason, right feeling, statistic array of facts, an 
amount of constitutional propaganda, beyond that 
at the service of any other franchise reform — - proof 
of these gets no further, if so far, as the porches 
of the officials' ears. The stone cuts them to the 
heart. The very armament-providers profess a de- 
testation, and they actually feel a great fear of even 
the symbol of women's rebellion — k the symbol being 
all that women have as yet shown in this agitation. 

No creature was hurt by any of those stones. No 
one was intended to be hurt. In comparison with 



328 WAY STATIONS 

the measures adopted by men under less provocation, 
women are still pursuing a policy of pin-pricks, hop- 
ing still that a prick, after all, may rouse the men of 
the nation. 

But no one in authority seems yet to have set him- 
self to find out whether behind the awful disorderli- 
ness of window-breaking there might be a desire for 
a better order. At present all that men can see in it 
is violence pure and simple. And, apparently, from 
the armament-provider to the jingo " mafficker," 
your apologist for war will insist that women shall 
not only stand for peace — they shall stand for his 
idea of peace. He excuses his own preoccupation 
with preparations for the slaughter of human beings 
on a vast scale by saying that all this is done in de J 
fence of the home. Women answer, with truth, that 
the one and only aim that could have brought the 
Woman's Movement to its present proportions is pro- 
tection of the home. It is woman's discovery (call- 
ing, in truth, for no profundity) that the most obvious 
objection to armies and navies is that they do not, 
and cannot, " defend the home " from any of the 
worser evils. 

They are useless allies in that conflict in which un- 
counted thousands yearly suffer and die. They die 
for lack of proper housing; for lack of uncontami- 
nated milk; for lack of segregation of contagious 
diseases ; through the absence of State-trained mid- 
wives ; through the dangerous trades. In the sweat- 
shops are the struggling legions who do worse than 



SERMONS IN STONES 329 

die — they breed disease. And there is the legion 
who do worse than die in unspeakable dens of infamy. 

Innocent childhood and honourable old age, 
the Holy Places in our pilgrimage — to rescue these 
from the unbeliever is the goal of the New Crusade. 

Among the friends and supporters of the Women's 
Social and Political Union, not all can submit them- 
selves to a struggle with the police. They see that 
there are many ways to work for this reform. Each 
must do the part which nature and training have 
made " her part." Not in this field, any more than 
in the fields of business or of art, are we all fitted 
for the same service. If we would not suffer that 
warning pain, characterised by Charlotte Bronte as 
" the result of estrangement from one's real charac- 
ter," we must act in accordance with our individual 
nature and qualification. The women do that who 
help in the less heroic ways. The women who en- 
counter public pains and penalties are accepting the 
heavier burden. They will have their public reward 
in the end, as well as, meanwhile, the unfaltering 
justification of their own conscience and the grateful 
devotion of their comrades. 

For the public must not suppose that, of the Suf- 
fragists who stand outside the physical conflict, all 
of them are pluming themselves upon finer feelings, 
or a dignity any more sensitive than those who fling 
themselves against the cordons of Westminster po- 
lice. Some of the women who feel they cannot do 
that, may know that they would not come out of the 



330 WAY STATIONS 

ordeal as sane and as unsmirched as we know these 
other women do. Of such as refrain there may be 
those who recognise that something of the horror of 
physical struggle would stain the memory forever, 
blurring the good they sought ; something of degrada- 
tion survive a conflict which they lack the power to 
spiritualise. Not all of us can take it simply enough. 
Perhaps we are too far away from the worser evils. 

Yet such considerations make a poor foundation 
upon which to rear a sense of superiority. Those 
who justify themselves for not bearing a share in 
the public struggle will not easily justify themselves 
for making no effort to understand these others who, 
at such personal cost, are fighting the battle in their 
way. Unnerving as are the particular scenes under 
consideration, even to think about, there is in them 
an implication more unnerving still. For we have 
here hundreds of women ready to accept the disap- 
proval (and all that may involve), not only on the 
part of the powers that be, and not only of the gen- 
eral public, but of their dearest friends and staunch- 
est followers — if by that single sacrifice, or any 
other, they can break through the apathy that makes 
men and women permit the greater evils that afflict 
the world. 

To speak, in conclusion, of the founder of the 
Militant Union, she is not in search of martyrdom. 
So little is she enamoured of sacrifice, that it is pre- 
cisely her impatience before the useless sacrifice! 
women make which goads her into protest. She 



SERMONS IN STONES 331 

would seem to be an economist in means. She will 
advocate, or herself do, only as much as is necessary 
to fulfil the end she has in view — that of compell- 
ing attention to matters long unregarded. 

If you should talk to her of " dignity," is it not 
conceivable that, thinking still of women broken, and 
of girls defiled, she would turn upon you with: 
"Whose dignity?" — and so make my dignity or 
yours cut a sorry figure weighed in the balance 
against that womanly dignity she cries out unceas- 
ingly to see established on the earth. 

Persons of this temper can do without approval. 
Yet allies they never dreamed of are found upon 
their side. A philosopher as grave and decorous as 
Emerson, for instance, with his assurance that " every 
project in the history of reform, no matter how vio- 
lent and surprising, is good when it is the dictate of 
a man's genius and constitution." 

Very probably Emerson, as well as Burke and Mr. 
W. E. Gladstone, might hesitate to include women 
among mankind. 

The Creator seems not to have hesitated. 

TIME TABLE 

April — June 15th, 19 12 

After much official opposition and many delays brought 
to an end at last by the persistence of Mrs. Pankhurst's 
friends, she was allowed to leave the prison-cell (to 
which police-court proceedings had consigned her), in 
order to prepare her defence before the higher court. 



332 WAY STATIONS 

Dr. Ethel Smyth and Dr. Garrett Anderson also had 
friends whose influence was great enough to secure the 
release of those ladies. Some two hundred more, lack- 
ing this advantage, were still in prison. Failing other 
help, they presently fell back upon that grim ally, the 
Hunger Strike. By this means some concession, under 
Rule 243a was wrung out of the authorities. 

The prolonged duel in prison and out, between the 
women and the Government sharpened the contrast in 
the treatment of women rebelling against intolerable in- 
justice and the treatment of men (leaders and rank and 
file alike) rebelling against minor wrongs. Opponents 
of Home Rule for Ireland had become more violent in 
word and deed. Ulster leaders (or, to be more precise, 
men living in England and having careers in England, 
who passed over to Ireland in order to incite a section 
to rebellion) effected the arming of Irishmen — not with 
stones and hammers, to smash glass, but with rifles to 
kill their fellow-creatures. In open defiance of the Un- 
lawful Drilling Act, and under the eyes of the police, 
Ulster citizens were set practising the arts of warfare. 
Sir Edward Carson publicly defied the British Govern- 
ment and preached the duty of rebellion. " Your Home 
Rule Bill/' he declared, " has no moral force, we will 
not accept it; and as you have treated us with fraud, if 
necessary we will treat you with force." 

Another Member of the English Parliament, Mr. F. E. 
Smith, had already said: "... I utterly decline to be 
bound in my resistance . . . within the strait-waistcoat 
of constitutional resistance. So far as Home Rule is 
concerned, I will shrink from nothing," etc. etc. 

"Violence," said the "Pall Mall Gazette," "is al- 
ways deplorable, so is bloodshed. Yet violence and 



SERMONS IN STONES 333 

bloodshed in Ulster would be incomparably a smaller 
misfortune than cowardly acquiescence/' etc. etc. 

The "Morning Post " echoed: "In a supreme crisis, 
where the vital interests of the State are at stake, weap- 
ons must be used which are not employed in normal and 
quiet times/ ' 

Those who uttered the above opinions were not ar- 
rested, and neither were the rioters in Belfast. But 
persons who in a lesser degree had put such utterances 
as the last into practice, were still in prison; and May 
15th saw their leaders on trial at the Old Bailey for 
conspiracy. 

The appearance on behalf of the Government by a 
member of the Government, appeared to satisfy men's 
idea of justice better than it satisfied women's. There 
was irony, at all events, in the chance which threw the 
weight of this particular prosecution on the shoulders of 
a man who believed in the justice of the women's Cause. 
A man, too, who appeared to be not insensible to the evi- 
dence of unselfish purpose and high moral character in 
the prisoners, and who, out of his own mouth, had pub- 
licly offered explanation and justification of just such 
acts as these on the score of which he was now urging 
punishment. 

Two years earlier, speaking of the contrast between 
campaigns for other reforms and that against the Lords' 
Veto, he had said : " Formerly, when the great mass of 
the people were voteless, they had to do something violent 
in order to show what they felt ; to-day the elector's bullet 
is his ballot. Let no one be deceived, therefore, because 
in the present struggle everything is peaceful and or- 
derly, in contrast to the disorderliness of other great 
struggles in the past." There is no better summing-up, 



334 WAY STATIONS 

alike of the evidence of enemies and the speeches of the 
Suffragists in defence, than that recorded opinion of the 
prosecutor with reference to the reformers of the past: 
" They had to do something violent until they had the 
vote!" 

The altered mental attitude toward the voteless of 
this Suffragist Attorney-General was an inevitable sub- 
ject for censure. We do not know whether he would 
have been ready to give up, temporarily, his public career, 
rather than perform at the Old Bailey trial what could 
only have been a hateful office. Yet had he refused to 
fulfil the task which his position put upon him, many 
besides those on the Government side of the controversy 
would have said that he did so out of fear of the Mili- 
tants. For many unnerving rumours were afloat at the 
moment as to what weapons the more determined among 
the women were prepared to use against their enemies. 
Possibly the Attorney-General found his task at the Old 
Bailey a degree less unendurable than the imputation of 
having shifted a dangerous, as well as odious, job upon 
another man. 

Those who paid heaviest felt the object-lesson of the 
Conspiracy Trial worth its " cost/* A wider, a totally 
different, public learned something of the true meaning 
of the Woman's Movement; of the great financial re- 
sources of the Women's Social and Political Union; of 
its vast organisation; its power of concerted action, and 
its discipline, as rigorous as it was voluntary. Men 
opened their eyes as the very enemies of the Union bore 
witness to these great qualities. Yet what counted most, 
there as elsewhere, was the revelation of personal char- 
acter behind the outward manifestation. Lookers-on felt 
that the speeches made by the defendants were winning 



SERMONS IN STONES 335 

understanding, winning something like sympathy, even in 
the ranks of professional opponents. As to the " general 
public," among those who day by day crowded into the 
court, after waiting at the doors in the fashion of the 
theatre-queue — there were women and men who had 
hitherto felt only curiosity, or mere irritation, over the 
events which had landed Suffragists in the Old Bailey 
dock. And now, under influence of the speeches in de- 
fence, these critics had fallen to cheering, and had to be 
threatened with expulsion from the court. Upon the 
jury, to whom the much-misrepresented militant acts 
were now for the first time fully explained, the effect of 
the prisoners' speeches was marked. So much was plain 
to anyone who watched the jurors, as day succeeded day. 
Suffragist faith in the probable intelligence and common 
sense of twelve chance-chosen citizens rose steadily till 
the hour of the judge's charge to the jury. Again 
women rubbed their eyes. Was this even-handed jus- 
tice? Had we not known, we would have taken it for 
a second prosecution. Yet, in spite of its defects in 
fact, in form and, above all, in temper, the jury, with 
admirable independence, added a notable rider to their 
verdict, guilty of the charge of conspiracy. " We de- 
sire," said the foreman, " unanimously to express the 
hope that, taking into consideration the undoubtedly pure 
motives that underlie the agitation which has led to this 
trial, you would be pleased to exercise the utmost len- 
iency in dealing with the case." 

Upon that the sentence was delivered: " Nine months 
in the Second Division, with the costs of the prosecu- 
tion." 

Well might the Liberal "Daily News" ask: "Would 
the jury have convicted if it had known in advance what 



336 WAY STATIONS 

Mr. Justice Coleridge understood by the utmost clem- 
ency? " 

Well, the justice of men was done. We saw those 
three brave, public-spirited people led off by the prison 
warders. 

Early in the following month the justice of men was 
invoked for the non-militant — for those women who had 
fallen into the hands of White Slavers, and had had the 
power to fight crushed out of them. The following ar- 
ticle appeared in " The Times " of June 10th. No con- 
tradiction reached the general public of this version of 
the ground upon which Parliament, spurred on by the 
friends of the late W. T. Stead, consented to concern 
itself on behalf of the most wretched and most non-mili- 
tant amongst women. 

Liberal Women and the White Slave Traffic Bill 

Apart from its merits, there is another reason which im- 
pelled the Government to take up the Criminal Law Amend- 
ment (White Slave Traffic) Bill, the second reading of which 
is the second order in the House of Commons to-day. At 
the opening meeting of the Women's Liberal Federation last 
week a resolution was proposed on behalf of the executive 
that the rules defining the constitution of the Federation 
should be altered so that it should no longer be possible to 
affiliate to the Federation associations which did not have as 
their object the admission of women to the Suffrage. This 
was carried, and also another resolution stating that if the 
Government's Reform Bill became law without the enfranchise- 
ment of women, it would be extremely difficult, if not impos- 
sible, for the Federation to sustain their present amicable 
relations with the Liberal Party. Copies of the latter resolu- 
tion were sent to the Cabinet and to the Whips, and the 
Government were taken aback at this, and regarded the 
threatened loss of the support of the Liberal ladies rather 
seriously. There was even some fear that the Federation 



SERMONS IN STONES 337 

might transfer their support to the Labour Party. It is 
understood that communications were then made to the Fed- 
eration on behalf of the Government, and that the Federation 
was asked to say what steps the Government could take at 
the moment to appease them. It was suggested that facilities 
might be given to one of the measures which the Women's 
Liberal Federation had at heart, and as a result the Govern- 
ment adopted the White Slave Traffic Bill. This has eased 
the situation, and members of the Government hope that in 
return the Women's Liberal Federation will not put into 
force their resolution that no associations shall be affiliated to 
the Federation except those promoting Woman Suffrage. 

Meanwhile those so largely responsible for awakening 
the public conscience were suffering the rigours of the 
Second Division in prison. Memorial after memorial 
poured in upon the Home Secretary. Each and all 
pressed earnestly for granting the treatment of first-class 
misdemeanants to Mrs. Pankhurst and Mr. and Mrs. 
Pethick Lawrence — " political prisoners, against whom/' 
as the Oxford memorial recapitulated, u not even the 
prosecution alleged any moral turpitude, and to whose 
undoubted purity of motive the jury drew particular at- 
tention." 

An International Petition on the same lines was signed 
by world-famous names. 

" In any event/' (said the " Daily News/' so often 
inimical to the Movement and to its more earnest cham- 
pions), "the thought of these three devoted persons im- 
prisoned in felons' cells is a torture and an outrage to 
every sensitive mind, that sees a world so plentifully 
lacking in nobility of spirit and so bitterly in need of it." 

Finally, the Home Office, acting yet again from no 
inner prompting, but only under pressure from without, 
was brought to reconsider the propriety of treating 



338 WAY STATIONS 

patriots and reformers like the lower sort of criminals. 
Mrs. Pankhurst and Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence 
were placed in the First Division. 

There they were on the date long fixed by the Women's 
Social and Political Union for the mass meeting of June 
15th, 1912. Miss Christabel Pankhurst's whereabouts 
was still a mystery to the authorities and to the general 
public. 



XX 

ALBERT HALL SPEECH * 

Mrs. Tnke, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

I shall be glad to add such emphasis as I am able 
to one or two points already made, and specially 
to emphasise the need of getting First Division treat- 
ment for every imprisoned Suffragist. Above all, 
the need that, even in our concern for our friends, we 
should not lose sight for an hour of the end for 
which they went to prison. 

When this question of Franchise comes up again 
in Parliament next week, you will be hearing once 
more about the beauty and fitness of woman's in- 
direct influence. . . . You will hear again next 
week that these reforms we are demanding — all ex- 
cept one! — will be granted in good time, by the 
grace and good-will of men. I stop to say there is 
no more reason in nature why women should have to 
ask these things as gifts from men, than there is 
why women should dole out benefits to the opposite 
sex. But the practical question is : even if it were 
moral, if it were decent to make woman the eternal 
suppliant, the beggar at the gates of life — woman 
who opens those gates ! — even if to keep her wait- 
ing there, with hands outstretched, did not revolt 

*June 15, 1912. 

339 



340 WAY STATIONS 

man's sense of fitness, as well as woman's dignity, has 
she by appealing and imploring, has she a chance 
of getting what she asks for — what she needs ? 

Plainly, the first thing she needs is other persons' 
understanding of her need. What chance has she of 
getting that? We have just had two new object- 
lessons on this theme. One given officially in Parlia- 
ment we will deal with later. The other, the lesson 
given non-officially, was elicited by one of the minor 
efforts made to secure approximate fair-dealing for 
the Suffrage leaders — a brief letter sent out under 
my signature to considerably over a hundred men of 
distinction and of widely varying pursuits. The list 
was not of my compiling; nor was it originally 
framed for any Suffragist end. Ninety per cent, of 
the persons addressed had been found ready a few 
years before to protest against a supposed injustice 
in the case of an imprisoned man. My letter, after 
stating the hardship involved in using political pris- 
oners like common felons, went on to say : " The' 
Suffragist who has not broken windows is constantly 
being told that there are more effectual ways of 
drawing attention to unfair discrimination, and of 
enlisting help to right a miscarriage of justice. I 
am addressing you in the hope that you will do some- 
thing to encourage this view." 

A certain nuipber answered favourably. A few — 
such people are always few — - were ready to help in 
every possible way. And they did help. Others 
were ready to write to the press, and did write to the 



ALBERT HALL SPEECH 341 

press. Whether the press was so ready to print their 
letters, I leave you to judge. The greater propor- 
tion who answered favourably, themselves suggested 
the advisability of signing a petition. 

Now about the others. I think we shall get some- 
thing at the hands of those who thought they were 
refusing to help us at all. For we shall learn from 
the reasons they gave how successful were those rep- 
resentatives of the sex that legislates for us, in look- 
ing at our question from our point of view. 

The answers from the great lawyers showed 
them much troubled. About the treatment of Suf- 
fragists in prison? Oh, no. About respect for the 
law. Well, respect for the law is a matter of concern 
to women, too, as we prove by being the law-abid- 
ing half of the community. Women may be for- 
given, I think, for supposing that lawyers — accus- 
tomed to weigh evidence and to examine motive — 
lawyers, we might think, will see the significance of 
the acts which led up to the Conspiracy Trial. Law- 
yers will recognise that those acts were prompted by 
a desire to see the law worthier of respect. Rightly 
construed, those acts meant a concern for the honour 
of the law greater than any lawyer of the time was 
showing. Yet all that those of my correspondents 
who were lawyers could do was to emphasise the 
limitations possible to men of the law when interpret- 
ing justice for Woman Suffragists. 

Then we had the point of view of the actor-mana- 
ger. Or, rather, an actor-manager's view. He was 



342 WAY STATIONS 

ready to sign a petition, although he was " dead 
against the inartistic methods of the Militant Suf- 
fragists. " What had happened was a play to the 
actor-manager, just as to the lawyer it was a mere 
breach of the peace. 

One of the most remarkable answers came from 
a novelist, justly accounted (on other grounds) a 
thinker as well as an artist. He disliked window- 
breaking — almost as much as we do. He admitted 
he could not confidently suggest an alternative to the 
do-nothing policy of the past. But . . . this man 
so eloquent, so resourceful in attacking abuses (other 
than the root of women's disfranchisement), sug- 
gested . . . you will hardly believe me, but he sug- 
gested that, as a substitute for militant tactics, we 
ought to make more use of pageants and proces- 
sions. While your sisters and friends are in prison, 
treated like the baser sort of criminals, you are to 
rest content with carrying banners through the 
streets. 

But, no! you are not to depend solely on banners. 
He had one other suggestion to make. Nothing that 
he could do. But we, he thinks, we might do much 
. . . by singing! Yes, he wrote that in sober ear- 
nest. But he is critical and fastidious. He is care- 
ful to add that our singing must be beautiful. We 
are not even to sing unless we can " do it beauti- 
fully." 

Well, we have good singers and good musicians. 
Ladies and Gentlemen, we must leave no means un- 



ALBERT HALL SPEECH 343 

tried. Do you think that if those of us whose music 
is our strong point, if we were to go and sing to the 
Prime Minister . . . what? Or if we went and 
harped to Mr. Lloyd George . . . would that make 
his championship less a thing of air? Do you think 
that if the smart little W.S.P.U. Band went 
to Downing Street, conducted by Dr. Ethel Smyth 
... do you think she would gain a better hearing 
with a baton in her hand than with that other in- 
strument she beat time with in March? I think the 
musicians of the Women's Social and Political Un- 
ion are more practical politicians than some of their 
advisers. They see, pace my correspondent, that 
keeping time may be losing time. Perhaps, even, 
that " doing time " makes music that shall last. 

I must not stop to tell you in detail about the 
others — the reformer who had believed in Woman 
Suffrage all his life, but would not help us because 
a man he didn't like was among our supporters. 
There was an educationist who would do nothing to 
secure decent treatment for the prisoners because 
they had not compensated the innocent sufferers for 
grave injury done their property! 

(A voice in the audience: " He was right! ") 
We did not hear his voice raised, nor that of the 
gentleman over there, to demand an indemnity for 
women in respect of injuries they received on Black 
Friday ! — injuries beside which broken glass is 
negligible indeed. But my Suffragist correspondent 
would seem to say he would have been ready to help 



344 WAY STATIONS 

us to secure fair treatment in prison for our friends, 
you would even have had his approval in support of 
the tactics of breaking windows, if having done that 
one day, you had gone the next to ask for the priv- 
ilege of replacing the broken glass. 

These are among the latest indications of the dif- 
ficulty men find in understanding things clear to 
women . . . clear for the very simple reason that 
they concern women more closely. 

Take, finally, the official object-lesson to the same 
effect. Why do you think so obvious a need as the 
passing of the White Slave Bill Was never faced in 
Parliament before this week? Why do you think its 
promoter could stand up in the House and, without 
fear of contradiction, say (to those who assure us 
we can safely leave women's interests in their hands) 
that he had moved this Bill time after time, and " al- 
ways met with curt refusal " ? You will remember 
that a little while ago the Chancellor of the Excheq- 
uer, replying for the Prime Minister, admitted the 
continual blocking of the Bill, and said he failed to 
understand the motives of Hon. Members who pre- 
vented its discussion. Some of you may, in turn, 
" fail to understand " the Chancellor, for he said, in 
answer to a question in the House, that he could not 
give any definite assurance that the Government 
would take action in the matter. Why? " Pressure 
of business." Out of all the months, and weeks, and 
days they have sat there — how much of that time 
did Members of Parliament say was required for this 



ALBERT HALL SPEECH 345 

Bill? Two hours ! They could not spare two hours. 
The Harley Street medical authority, in moving the 
resolution in favour of the bill last Monday at the 
Guildhall, had to tell that gathering that during the 
five years' strenuous effort on the part of support- 
ers outside the Commons — inside, the Bill had in- 
variably been . blocked. Think what that means. 
" Blocked " for five years. . . . Blocked ! by those 
self-constituted guardians of women and girls ! 

Ladies and Gentlemen, the " five years' strenuous 
effort ■' referred to, dates the inception of this Bill 
with great significance for those who have followed 
the history of the Women's Social and Political Un- 
ion. The mover of the Guildhall resolution hoped 
there was now a brighter prospect for the Bill. 
There is, and we know why. Mrs. Pankhurst is why ! 
The Pethick Lawrences are why! All you women 
wearing the badge of the prison gate are why. The 
new spirit among Suffragists is cited, in Parliament 
and out, as the reason the Government thought it 
prudent, after all, to find time for the White Slave 
Bill. 

The significance of the Bill's being in the hands 
of an Anti-Suffragist is not lost upon us. Indeed, 
he said in so many words that members must now 
pass the Bill, or lay themselves open to the charge 
of indifference to women's interests. 

But this Bill deals with the very oldest of the 
concrete evils resulting from women's dependence 
upon men. Why did those friendly members of the 



346 WAY STATIONS 

House of Commons wait? Why did their fathers 
wait? You could not bear to hear what that waiting 
cost . . . nor I to tell you. The Parliamentary sup- 
porters of the White Slave Bill did not only wait till 
the militant movement had fired people's hearts. 
Some say they waited to strike a cynical bargain with 
a body of Liberal women. I cannot say as to that. 
But I do know a fact still more significant — and 
a greater proof I do not ask to show how mad we 
should be to trust these things to any body of men. 

The bringing forward of this cruelly belated piece 
of legislation comes as one of the far-reaching rip- 
ples in the wake of that vast disaster which took the 
" Titanic " down two miles to the bottom of the sea. 
As we have seen, this Bill (the past treatment of 
which many women consider typical of the legisla- 
tors 5 attitude), this Bill had been before Parliament 
again and again, year in year out. There was 
nothing the least new about it — - except as it might 
be affected by the gathering force of the Women's 
Suffrage Movement. What all of a sudden brought 
the need of this Bill sharply home to men? Not the 
abiding horror of those women's lives . . . but the 
death of a man. 

The first the general public heard of this Bill was 
at the time, when, stirred and shaken by the " Ti- 
tanic " disaster, we read that the friends of one of 
the victims were proposing a memorial to the man 
most widely known, most widely loved of all those 
who went down with the ship. No one could pro- 



ALBERT HALL SPEECH 347 

pose a memorial to that man (and this in itself is a 
fine sort of epitaph!), no one proposing a memorial 
to him could forget his concern for the unhappiest 
among women. He would have liked that. There 
will not be many monuments in the land as noble as 
the one raised to Mr. Stead, 

But what does this honour to the dead tell us 
about the living? Nothing very new, except in its 
direct bearing on the woman question. Men who 
had known Mr. Stead all his life, men who had looked 
on, indifferent or merely embarrassed, by his cham- 
pionship of people difficult to talk about — men who 
had seen his sacrifice unmoved, seen him insulted and 
sent to prison, these men-friends of his, stirred at 
last by the reverberation of the " Titanic " disaster, 
saw the man more clearly, I think, than they had 
seen him here at home. For all the silence that 
wraps the end, no soul who knew him but knows how 
he died. He saw the women and children into the 
boats. And he seems to have left some silent charge 
behind, that other lifeboats should be sent out to save 
the women who are launched on angrier seas in a 
blacker night. 

My point is that while we welcome the action 
of those who at last have taken up the Bill — my 
point is that they could not do this (since they did 
not) — for the mere sake of women's crying need. 
They had to get at the poignancy of that need 
through the vision of the Seer, through a highly 
exceptional member of their own sex. And the 



348 WAY STATIONS 

reason they had to wait for that is because these 
questions are decided without the help of the ordi- 
nary women. 

You who have not up to now recognised the need 
of women's direct share in public affairs — you must 
see that leaving other women's interests entirely to 
men is unfair to men, as well as horribly dangerous 
for women. 

So, you must come and join us. Especially the 
happy women — and men. For the foundation of 
civilised society is a relation of confidence between 
men and women. 



IN CONCLUSION * 

The later history of the Women's Movement will be 
more readily recalled than the circumstances I have 
set down, circumstances which furnish the key to 
more recent happenings. 

Unprejudiced minds will have noted how women 
passed from stage to stage, trying all peaceful 
measures, trying them over and over with a persist- 
ence and a hopefulness that in the retrospect moves 
us to marvel not that some women sometimes showed 
impatience, but that so many for so long repressed 
impatience. 1 

And what, finally, has been the effect alike of pa- 
tience and impatience? 

The vote is not yet won. It is irrevocably coming, 
as its opponents know and frequently admit. In 
despair at relinquishing their hope to do more than 
delay Woman Suffrage for a space, the Antis are 
filling the void with Cassandra-prophecies of the evils 
that Suffrage will bring. They point to manifesta- 
tions which Militancy has made common among women 
as heralds of the bitter days to be. 

* Printed in MeClure's Magazine for March, 1913, under the 
title of: " Woman's War." 

i Since writing this, the same view has been publicly ex- 
pressed by a member of the Government, Mr. F. W. Acland, 
Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs. 

349 



850 WAY STATIONS 

We do not deny that women are changed. They 
are more changed than their critics know. 

Let us consider some of the more obvious changes 
wrought by Militancy, first upon the individual, and 
second upon the generality. 

Take the effect upon individual women. These 
years of conflict — of severance from friends, of 
brutalities suffered in the streets and at public meet- 
ings, of torture undergone in prison — have for their 
immediate effect upon the individual the strengthen- 
ing of many a soul and the shattering of a good many 
bodies. In addition to this, some observers think 
they see the marks of the long strain upon the public 
policy of individual women in the movement, and in 
the private relationships between certain of the 
workers. 

To have escaped some such result of a struggle so 
protracted and kept at so high pitch, women must 
needs have ceased being human. Admittedly, the 
opponents of Woman Suffrage have never been able 
so to hamper our advance as have other Suffragists 
— whether by leading a section of the forces off the 
main route, or by standing neutral at some crisis 
when not to be for was to be against. This is not 
an experience peculiar to women's parties. Nor for 
the first time in the history of political movements 
have these errors been encouraged or instigated by 
the enemy. For an ally to take the wrong road in 
all good faith, or for conscientious Doubt to call a 
halt (Doubt full as honest as the Conviction that 



IN CONCLUSION 351 

cried " on ") — incidents such as these could, at their 
worst, only complicate and momentarily hamper the 
campaign. The morale of the Woman's Movement 
could be affected only by the setting in opposition 
forces which had been fighting for the same end. To 
do this has always been a highly effectual tactic on 
the part of a common enemy — the more effectual, 
perhaps, when employed by men against the subtler 
forces of women in revolt than in conflicts between 
men. 

When the present First Lord of the Admiralty 
was Home Secretary he unfolded to a soldier-friend 
his difficulty in dealing with the Militants, and told 
of precautions he was taking for the future — extra 
police protection and severities of sorts. The soldier 
shook his head. " You will never make a success," 
he said, " of setting men to fight women. Your only 
hope is to set women against women." This theory 
was turned into visible practice when it was so ably 
supported by the strategist of the Cabinet, the " Suf- 
fragist " Minister who drove the wedge of discord 
into the compact body of Suffragist support to the 
Conciliation Bill of 1910. 

But if what has befallen men's parties, time after 
time, befalls women's also what then? 

What if that close union within the Union is dis- 
solved? We would rather the dissolution had never 
come, or had come after the vote was won. Yet 
who shall feel sure that the purpose for which the 
association was formed had not already been accom- 



S5£ WAY STATIONS 

plished? Its true mission was the Awakening of 
Women. Not solely to get them votes, but to make 
them realise the power resident in the vote; and the 
woman's need (man's need as well) that women should 
exercise that power. Touched by the pathetic fear of 
the Anti that Woman Suffrage spells chaos and old 
England's doom instead of her Regeneration, Suf- 
fragists of the " soothing " sort have been known to 
point to places where giving the vote to women has 
" made no perceptible difference." If such comforfe 
is not illusory, it is a shame to any land of which it 
could be justly said. It is a shame to the women of 
that land — a proof that they are unfaithful stew- 
ards of their trust, or that even more needful than 
we knew was the fuller enlightenment the Militants 
have won. 

Had the Powers That Be as much foresight as 
they have inflexibility, they would have granted a 
meagre instalment of Woman Suffrage as soon as 
the demand became earnest. Deprived of the main 
ground of complaint (since the principle would have 
been conceded), the majority even of enfranchised 
women would have looked upon the vote with so little 
realisation of its power, that the weapon might have 
lain in their hands, little used, perhaps for a genera- 
tion. 

The longer all the women in the country are denied 
a vote, the wider must be the door which ultimately 
admits them, and the greater the changes which 
their entrance on the scene will effect. Meanwhile, 



IN CONCLUSION 853 

they have learned from the repressive measures of 
those who would keep them out, more than ever the 
Suffrage leaders could teach them. 

As I have admitted, those who cry, that Militancy 
has left its mark on women, are right. So far as 
concerns the active Militants themselves, we have 
seen that women who were so concerned to know that 
Government offices were empty before they sent stones 
through the windows in June, were less concerned in 
November for the bodily safety of those within. 
Why was that? Not solely because women en bloo 
are very much like men en bloc, nor merely because 
all women will not turn the other cheek any more 
than will all men. The consideration that urged on 
the Militants in November, was that the officials nom- 
inally behind Government windows were found to be 
in no danger so great as the danger of remaining 
indifferent to, or ignorant of, their non-performance 
of public duty. No public servant, however unfaith- 
ful, had suffered, or was likely to suffer, as scores of 
women had been made to suffer. We do not deny 
that the earlier concern for the bodily safety of of- 
ficials became secondary to a concern for Suffragists, 
after seeing them come out of prison sick and broken 
from the disgusting struggle with prison authority 
armed with hose-pipes and unclean nasal-tubes. 

Each individual woman who went through the hor- 
ror of such experience became a centre of enlighten- 
ment for all whom she might thereafter reach. 
Never again for her, or for her friends, any cobweb 



354 WAY STATIONS 

left of that old illusion as to the chivalry of the aver- 
age official. " This and this they did to me rather 
than admit my purpose honest, rather than treat me 
as decently as they treat men convicted of the baser 
crimes." 

Is it rational to expect these experiences to leave 
a woman unchanged? If she were to remain un- 
changed, would she not prove herself more insensate 
than the brutes? 

People who would insist that such things shall 
leave a woman unmoved are not merely those who 
would deny her right to the ballot. They would 
deny her right to the feelings of a human being. 

A great deal of water will flow under Westminster 
Bridge before women forget what men were willing 
to see them suffer rather than see them voters ; be- 
fore they forget the forbearance shown to malcon- 
tents in Ulster and at Tonypandy, as contrasted with 
the brutality shown malcontents at Wrexham and 
Llanistumdwy. Much as we desire to see understand- 
ing and good-will between the sexes — do we zvant 
women to forget these lessons? 

Let us be frank about this. 

Let us recognise that many a woman who took no 
part in it owes to the public struggle her first knowl- 
edge of those struggles, carried on for ages, out of 
the public eye. This dear-bought knowledge has 
changed the intellectual outlook on the world for 
many a woman who has no fault to find with her 
own individual lot, nor with the attitude towards her- 



IN CONCLUSION 355 

self of the men she has known best. The first 
shrinking realisation of what kind of a world this is 
to tens of thousands of women has brought many a 
happy and peace-loving soul to wonder whether the 
fiery ordeal in the open, and the lonely battle in the 
gaols, may not have been needed to set free the spirit 
of a sex limited for ages, to those small garden plots 
of life — to stray outside which was to fall upon dis- 
honour. 

The most ardent pacifist will hesitate to deny the 
truth of that militant saying : " Few of us believe in 
peace at any price." Who, seeing a little child at- 
tacked or in need of protection from violence, who 
of us would withhold help, even if help (to effect its 
end) involved our using physical force? Tolstoy 
told a private friend that even in such a case he would 
refrain. Few other men, I think, and few women. 

Those who thought it permissible only in men to 
defy tyranny, had said that nothing but evil could 
come of women's expressing moral indignation with 
all their might, and as variously as men have done, 
at every crisis in history. 

Only evil could come of it? One of the best things 
in civilisation has come of it. Proof of moral and 
physical courage in women not as a rare exception, 
here or there, at call of motherhood, or of any per- 
sonal devotion, but as a basis in character, to be 
looked for, counted on. 

The militant campaign has not yet won votes? 
No. But the Militants have campaigned to such 



356 WAY STATIONS 

purpose that there are to-day more free women in 
England than anywhere in the world — free with a 
freedom of which the ballot will be a symbol, but 
which the ballot cannot in itself endue with the es- 
sence of liberty, or charge with effective author- 
ity. 

Those who have watched the chains fall off from 
one after another during these last half-dozen years 
will understand. Persons from whom these moral 
and spiritual experiences have been hidden may al- 
low me, in a page or two, to illustrate what has been 
happening. 

One object-lesson came at a time of such need 
that, if it can be passed on faithfully enough, it may 
hearten others. 

At perhaps the most crucial hour in the history 
of women's struggle for the vote, certain politicians 
from whom better things were expected had made a 
grave mistake — through lack of information, as 
some women believed. How to bring that informs 
tion home was the concern of those who (in face of 
some evidence to the contrary) held to their faith in 
men's fundamental fairness. Those who spend their 
lives in the House of Commons could not get this in- 
formation there. And, at the time I speak of, they 
could not get such information from the press, since, 
owing to the tension, that often open door was closed. 
Word was brought of letters to the more influential 
papers being refused, or held back till they were use- 
less. 



IN CONCLUSION 357 

To a woman lying ill came an appeal that she 
should set down a statement of how the matter looked 
to a Suffragist. The first impulse to call such an 
undertaking impossible was repressed. An article, 
destined for an editor wide-minded, chivalrous, was 
written — at what cost need not be insisted on. 
Time was the great factor. The editor had tele- 
graphed he would reserve space. The article was 
finished ; but it might be thought too long, or in some 
detail need revision. The writer left her bed and 
took the article to London. 

She found the editor genial and serene, even a lit- 
tle jocular on the score of " the eternal theme." He 
read the first paragraph, and under the eyes of his 
old contributor became a stranger — a man she had 
not only never seen before, but never guessed at. 
What he said was less illuminating than what he 
looked. 

What! to want to talk about the motive behind 
deeds that called for nothing but wholesale condem- 
nation? " And this . . . this stone-throwing ! You 
justify ... !" 

" I explain it," she answered. 

" Isn't it possible for you to understand ! An 
article like this would bring down a charge of con- 
spiracy on any one who signed it." The contributor's 
readiness to take the risk was fuel on the flame. Any 
editor who published such opinions would be indict- 
able! He stood up with that changed face, repeat- 
ing " Stones ! — - and people like you " — etc., pelt- 



358 WAY STATIONS 

ing the contributor again, and yet again, with 
" Stones ! " 

Only for unadulterated blame and execration of 
Militancy was any admittance there, or anywhere 
else — according to the most open-minded of edi- 
tors. 

The initial " Conspiracy," then (that of the au- 
thorities to deny fair hearing to their women oppo- 
nents), was, as we had been told, matched by con- 
spiracy in the press. The public was to be shut out 
from so much as a chance of hearing the other side. 

The spare hour before train-time was spent at a 
confectioner's near the station. No one else in the 
tea-room behind the shop. The repulsed contribu- 
tor drew up shivering to the fire, going over what 
had happened. She had come far to try to help a 
little towards better understanding. All she had 
achieved was a realisation that better understanding 
wasn't wanted. The mere attempt at it resented as 
mortal offence. 

The worst of what had happened was that the ex- 
perience did not stand alone. Better women had 
fared worse. If those women in prison could be so 
profoundly misunderstood, how was understanding 
ever to come? A sense of the immensity of the under- 
taking Suffragists had shouldered overwhelmed her; 
she sat bowed down. Presently, a consciousness that 
someone had come in. Not the waitress — she had 
been and gone. The woman by the fire lifted her 



IN CONCLUSION 359 

head to see a girl standing near, straightening her 
hat at the overmantel glass, touching the hair that 
showed intensely dark against her smooth forehead. 
As the girl looked at herself, the woman looked at 
her too. Genus : shop-girl, sixteen or seventeen ; not 
very refined; a round face, heavily pretty; full lips, 
showing the scarlet of health. Not the least made 
up; her clothes noticeably poor, with an effort at 
being in the mode. While the girl and the woman 
both looked at the young face in the glass, the young 
face changed and turned to confront a man who evi- 
dently counted on meeting her in this dull, eminently 
respectable place. The man was of superior class; 
forty-odd; fattish, thick-necked, slightly bald, very 
sleek and well-turned out. The two sat down at the 
nearest table. He ordered tea. The woman by the 
fire, full of other thoughts, forgot them, till presently 
an accent in the man's voice reached her. He was 
urging some point. The girl said little. The 
woman looked again in the fire. The fragments of 
talk that forced their way to her inattentive ear 
seemed to take the form of questions : " Didn't you 
go?" "Why didn't you go?" "Don't you ever 
go anywhere? " " Why don't you? " The girl was 
gaining confidence. She answered with growing as- 
surance and a poor little flirtatiousness which he, 
leaning to her, encouraged with eye and smile. The 
usual hour for tea was past. No one else there but 
a tired, abstracted woman and those two. The man 
made no effort to disguise his quest. The woman 



360 WAY STATIONS 

i 

made no effort to catch even the general drift of what 

was passing, thinking still of those girl-teachers, 
women-doctors, Poor Law guardians, social work- 
ers and the rest shut up in Holloway — and why 
some of them had gone there. Presently the woman 
(whose different way of helping had failed) found 
that between her and that mental vision of the stone- 
thrower in her cell the picture at the tea-table had 
forced its way: the cheap little cockney beauty, 
bridling, only half-reluctant, wholly provocative, ex- 
cited, sixteen ! The man of forty, his thick neck red 
below the thin, brilliantined hair, arms on table, head 
thrust forward turtle-like, the low, educated voice 
coaxing the ill-paid, ill-educated girL The gulf be- 
tween her and the women in prison! So wide, so 
deep, thought itself was baulked to bridge it. 

Even the wayfarer by the fire was too far away. 
What could the sick, disheartened woman say, what 
had she to offer this poor, pretty creature so plainly 
marked out for treading the primrose path to the 
everlasting bonfire? 

To have reached her one must have found her be- 
fore to-day, in time to make her demand more of life 
than . . . this. 

Then, in the little space of time needed for draw- 
ing on a glove, a well-nigh incredible fact in the 
psychology of the times was presented and made 
clearer than could have been done by a library of 
books. 



IN CONCLUSION 361 

The " fact " was that the women shut up in prison 
had got into communication with this girl. 

"A previous engagement, have you?" the man 
was laughing at the excuse. " Who with ? " And 
then, softly, " Who's going to take care of you? " 

" Lottie and me are going to see after ourselves." 

"You can't. You must let me — " 

" Oh, you think we can't do anything except what 
you say." She put up her chin. Then in the heavily 
pretty face an odd flash. " Haven't you heard," she 
said, " that we can break windows? " 

The turtle-head drew in as though one of the 
stones had struck it. 

" Stones ! " The editor's voice came back. " An 
educated, decent woman throwing a stone ! " 

The man at the tea-table was not more surprised 
than the woman by the fire at seeing what strange 
shores the widening ripples reached. In the girl's 
face an instant's reflection of the daring! Bond 
Street ! — the Paradise of such as she, where the win- 
dows flash with jewels and blossom with laces and 
silk — a window smashed in the face of all that lux- 
ury was to this poor fly struggling in the meaner web 
the type of a courage she would never know. 

I am afraid the women in Holloway, or out, were 
too late to save that girl. But the women in Hollo- 
way had given her a glimpse, at least, of a possible 
defiance hurled at evil — one flash of that bright 
weapon in the air before the dark of yielding. 



362 WAY STATIONS 

I am fully aware that this object-lesson would 
mean very little to many. In the first place, it pre- 
sents a concatenation of circumstance too common. 
In the second, it has been too often sentimentalised 
clean out of sight of its gruesome end. Men (women 
too) who have looked on undisturbed at that sort of 
thing — are full of honest horror at the stone- 
thrower. 

One could almost sympathise with the officials who, 
all unprepared, were called on to deal with militant 
women. Men trained to govern and to dominate; 
brought up from their schooldays to think of women 
as a race apart, creatures for drudgery, or for smil- 
ing and the coy assent in youth, for crooning lulla- 
bys in the later years. What wonder the militant 
women not only angered but dumbfounded the official 
mind to bewilderment's verge, and toppled it over the 
verge into the pit of persecution. 

Nothing out of the way in a middle-aged man's hav- 
ing a little flirtation with a work-girl over a cup of 
tea. But a thing monstrous that girls and women 
should be demanding different conditions in industry, 
a different wage-scale, a different sort of attention 
from " kind " gentlemen. And when the kind gentle- 
men refuse, if, instead of acquiescence, in some hands 
a stone — the end of the world is at hand unless 
these " maenads n are severely punished. 

You shall search history in vain for a spectacle 
more tragi-comic than the juxtaposition of the old- 
fashioned official and the girl in college cap and gown 



IN CONCLUSION 363 

— so innocent-looking as seeming to invite the pater- 
nal pat on shoulder, until the firm voice puts some 
highly embarrassing interrogatory about a friend in 
Abergavenny Gaol. Bad enough to have old or 
middle-aged women asking inconvenient questions, 
without having some one who looks the very type of 

"Prim little scholars . . . 

"Trained to stand in rows^ and asking if they please," 

standing up at a public meeting to ask : " Why do 
you sentimentalise about benevolence instead of do- 
ing justice?" "Why do you talk of making the 
Franchise truly representative* when you leave out 
the women ? " 

The " kind gentleman " at Nottingham the other 
day not only left women out of his " truly repre- 
sentative scheme " - — he let them be thrust out before 
his eyes — after appealing to them to be quiet and 
" sweet. 55 

Sweet! People steeled by knowledge of what 
women are compelled to bear in factories, in sweat- 
shops, and in prisons, were to save their own skins by 
dint of being " sweet " ! The recommendation has a 
somewhat musty smell. Upon the women's failure to 
accept it, let us hope for sake of the Liberal gentle- 
man looking on at the subsequent hustling, dragging, 
gagging, and throwing out — let us hope that not 
too plain was his satisfaction at the penalty inflicted 
upon women who decline to be " sweet." 

" Why did you go ? " was asked of the well-born. 



364 WAY STATIONS 

educated girl lying broken in bed after Llanistumdwy. 
" You were warned what to expect. 55 

" That was why we went," came the answer. 

And then an excuse supplied by a local critic of 
W.S.P.U. autocracy, "You were sent, I suppose?" 

" No,' 5 the girl said, " we happened to be near on 
our holiday. 55 

She and her friend had heard that two women were 
going to make a protest against a " Suffragist 55 
Ministers offering the public a gift, when his over- 
due public debt remained unpaid. For that protest 
" two weren't enough,' 5 the girl said ; " so we thought 
we'd better go." 

She stopped the flow of pity for her wounds by 
a feeble attempt to burlesque the trouble she would 
have when she was better, in doing her hair so as 
to cover the bare place where a handful had been 
wrenched out. She refused to be commiserated for 
that and worse. " It wasn't so bad. I did hear 
the voices shouting horrible things. I saw the dis- 
torted faces, fists and sticks in the air. But I never 
felt the blows. I remembered the women at Wrex- 
ham. I'd do it again. 55 

And here I come to the chief gain that emerges 
from these years, next after (or perhaps even before) 
those lessons in the protection afforded by the vote. 
People make much of division among Suffragists. 
Division among politicians is not new in the world. 
What is new is the passion of impersonal loyalty 



IN CONCLUSION 365 

which the fuller knowledge has evoked amongst rank 
and file. 

The women of the past were never aware to the 
extent that we are now aware of the penalty other 
women pay for our mean content with a better lot. 

No one has been able to say that in the evil days be- 
hind, any body of independent women realised the 
price other women had to pay for the supineness of 
the fortunate. If woman's loyalty to her sisters were 
to fail now, that failure would be a stigma upon all 
concerted effort of the future ; a weight to drag down 
the hope of all the women (and through them all the 
men) yet to be born. If this newly awakened con- 
science were waked in vain — if it ever slept again, 
then, indeed, might women and men, too, despair. 

Believing, as we do, in the impossibility of that, 
women are full of hope. And men? Beyond a doubt 
some men are very angry. 

Beyond a doubt the sufferings of the militant 
women — who, if not most in earnest, have paid heav- 
iest for their share in instructing us all — beyond a 
doubt these sufferings in welding women together have 
(by no wish of their own — often with pain and grief 
and irretrievable loss) ranged women against those 
men most determined to crush out the revolt. 

The resultant irritation felt by men has not by any 
manner of means been wholly evil. It has pricked 
many to knowledge, and some to enlightened action. 

Unable to see but one side of the shield, some women 



S66 WAY STATIONS 

(not consciously weighing their private difficulties 
against the public good) have been unduly disturbed. 

They would agree with Mrs. Creighton that the 
vote may be a small thing, but that the refusal of the 
vote has been a very serious thing. Mrs. Creighton 
did not seem to mean by the last half of that sentence 
what the Militant means. She seemed to glance at a 
regrettable change in the relationships between men 
and women. 

I believe that many like myself were much more 
troubled at the beginning of the conflict by the mere 
hint of sex-antagonism (at a time when so little of 
that feeling was expressed or, as we thought, felt) 
than later, since men have shown us how great was 
the sex-antagonism already operant in the world. 

Well, why are we not appalled? 

For two good reasons. First, because such proof 
of sex-antagonism as comes our way is not created 
by the Suffrage agitation. The Suffrage agitation 
has brought it out of hiding. The more thoroughly 
we go into the lives of poor, dependent women (and 
they are the immense majority), the more clearly we 
see that the evil which this contest has brought to the 
surface was always there. The condition of its re- 
maining there, to fester and to breed its myriad 
progeny, the sole condition upon which it could con- 
tinue, was that it should not be brought to the sur- 
face. The evil of bad relationship between the sexes 
is not the new thing. The attack upon it is the new 
thing. 



IN CONCLUSION $61 

If not for us individually, that sex-contempt was 
there. The active Suffragist feels that she can bear 
it better than those for whom it was formerly re- 
served. 

The second reason we are not appalled, but rather 
consoled and heartened, is that precisely through 
this struggle we have been taught more faith both in 
man-nature and in woman-nature — which is to say in 
that human nature which alike they share. 

The more generous-minded among men (or the 
better instructed) have responded generously, under- 
standing^, to the new claims made by women. I 
will not dwell on the more obvious marks left on so- 
ciety and laws by men's response to the newly awak- 
ened spirit among women. With Militancy in the 
air, the reactionaries on the Divorce Commission had 
not the courage to press for their advocacy of the 
double moral standard. This fruitful cause of in- 
justice and race degeneracy has only in these last 
months been given an effectual coup de grace. There 
were men serving on that Commission who had ad- 
mitted no flaw, had seen no flaw, in the divorce laws 
until — well, until the last few years. 

Never in all the years of women's wandering in 
the political wilderness, never before Militancy have 
men formed societies to help women to freedom. 

Before history was written men, as the songs and 
sagas tell us, did battle for women, ostensibly for 
some one particular " faire ladye," often in reality 
for the excitement of the tourney and the honour of 



368 WAY STATIONS 

the knight. Till these days of the new Militancy 
few were the men who entered the lists to do battle 
for women whom they did not know, women in grim, 
unpicturesque need, women who could never reward 
these latter-day knights, and were not asked for re- 
ward. 

Never before Militancy have men given up valu- 
able posts, risked livelihood, sacrificed ambition, faced 
private ridicule and public execration, blows, broken 
limbs, gone to prison — all that is since Militancy. 

In many ways the sensitive observer will mark the 
enlightening effect on men of the new standards. 
They begin to speak of women in public with less 
flummery ; they write of her with an accent less cock- 
sure, and yet more worthy of assurance. 

Mr. J. M. Barrie's Twelve Pound Look is since 
Militancy, and many a glance less shrewdly directed 
to masculine fatuity. 

But women must not expect the scales to fall over- 
soon from the general eye. 

The old superciliousness will be long in dying. 
Women will mark it still in its thousand forms, espe- 
cially in the elderly-minded. Men will go on naively 
crowning one another, bestowing on one another all 
the lucrative and power-conferring posts and all the 
sinecures. They will sit sole sex on the great Com- 
mittees controlling Art and Science as well as Law 
and Administrative Government. 

They will dine in fullness and permit women to 
come in afterwards like the good children — save 



IN CONCLUSION 369 

that, unlike the children, women will be bidden to sit 
apart and not speak, but listen — feeding upon the 
manna of masculine eloquence. 

But these are all very little things in comparison 
with the respect that must in the near future be given 
to the essentials — as women see life ; to the rever- 
ence shown children and the very old of both sexes ; to 
education and care for the public health. The rest 
can wait. 

What could not wait was acceptance of the root- 
idea of this thing called Militancy,, The root-idea is : 
the application to women of the duty to rise up 
against evil; the baseness of lying down under evil. 
Women see at last that they must share that duty 
with men, or else with men share the waste and ruin 
of evasion. 

We do not deny that women have put into their 
politics a passion not usual with men. We may even 
think that this duty of revolt against evil may sound 
a sterner call to women. With men these things are 
largely an intellectual gymnastic, exercises in the 
Theory and Practice of Government, expression of 
this or that school of Philosophy or [un] applied 
Science. 

With women these matters are the stuff of exist- 
ence, their daily bread. 

Men, in dealing with social abuses, are cabined 
and confined by formulae, doctrines, laws ; by Parlia- 
mentary Procedure — by this intellectual fetish or 
that. 



370 WAY STATIONS 

In the case of women the practical end is kept in 
sight by no keener conscience than men's, and cer- 
tainly by no clearer apprehension of the abstract 
good. The end is kept well in the sight of women 
by an admonishment which Nature denied to man. 

If women have shown in their brief commerce with 
politics an energy and a resolution which have as- 
tonished and bewildered male authority, the reason 
seems to be that behind women's politics is a force 
peculiar to women. Among a growing number, 
whether open or secret aiders and abettors of Mili- 
tancy, women have come (some consciously, some 
unconsciously) to feel that Militant Suffragism is the 
outgrowth of a fierce, race-protecting passion. It is 
the expression of that mother-instinct which rules in 
the spirit as well as in the body of our half of the 
world. It is the force that does indeed make the fe- 
male more deadly than the male, if she descries a 
menace to her charge — the future of the species. 
Those who wished her to remain ignorant of the 
menace, those who wished to arrest the " uplift " 
of a vast submerged area of human possibility, or 
those who less foolishly wished it brought to light 
more gradually, and by a birth less fierce in labour- 
pain, had only one course to pursue: to eschew re- 
pression. 

The reactionary should not make too much of 
the fact that the women of the British Isles have not 
yet attained political liberty. Hundreds and thou- 



IN CONCLUSION 371 

sands of them have been given the Freedom of the 
City of the Soul. 

Any Suffragist who reviews the history of the 
Militant Movement, and in any hour of discourage- 
ment between now and that sure day when the vote 
is yielded — anyone who for a moment supposes the 
militant party to have failed, confesses to shallow 
thinking. In Militancy (acting, as we are the first 
to admit, in conjunction with a world-wide tendency) 
a force was set to work six years ago which needed 
only counter force, needed only ruthless repression, 
to develop an explosive power which should crack the 
crust of ages. 

Of that immeasurable, underlying region, only iso- 
lated peaks had hitherto appeared — lonely islets 
above the waters. Other peaks would have risen 
slowly, slowly the waters have receded and the up- 
ward tendency been spread over a wide extent of time 
— without thunder, rage, and cataclysm. 

But in England, no. 

Like one of those vast, irresistible movements in 
physical nature which has sunk the old high places 
under in-rushing seas, and, from the seat of internal 
fires has forced up mountain-chains to cool their heads 
in snow, so have the deeps of the submerged sex been 
upborn to light, to the bright danger of the peaks, 
by those very forces which sought to hold her down. 

THE END 



APR 16 1913 




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